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XHoorn^sfm

.b^.Jack

Your Subscription is Your Private Window On Baby is Three

Theodore Sturgeon

The Ballad of
Lost C'Mell
Cordwaincr Smith

The Big Time
Fritz Lciber

The Caves of Steel
Isaac Asimov

The only thing we know about tomorrow
is that it hus its roots today. And out of the
fantastic facts of today's scientific wonders
Galaxy's all-star lineup of contributors weave
stories that are sometimes wry^ sometimes ter-
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Hero arc some of the famous stories that
appeared in Galaxy in its first fifteen years.
Will the next fifteen years be as good?

Frankly, we don't think so. We think they'll
be better!

Med Ship Man
Murray Leinster

The Men in the Walls
William Tenn

The Old Die Rich
H. L. Gold

The Puppet Masters
Robert A. Heinlein

Surface Tension
James Blish

The Visitor at the Zoo
Damon Knight

Wind betweeh
the Worlds
Lester del Bey

Day After Doomsday
Poul Anderson

The Demolished Man
Alfred Bestor

Do I Wake or Dream?
Frank Herbert

The Dragon Masters
Jack Vance

The Fireman
(Farcnheit 4SJ )

Ray Bradbury

Gravy Planet
(The Space Merchants;
Pohl & Kornbluth

Here Gather the Stars
(Way Station)
Clifford D. Simok

Home from the Shore
Gordon R. Dickson

Hot Planet
Hal Clement

King of the City
Keith Laumer

Mindswap
Robert Sheckicy

jum, 1968
VoL 18. 6

KSUB 127

imiDSOF

SCIENCE
FICTION

ALL NEW
STORIES

Frederik Pohl, Editor

Lester del Rey, Managing Editor
Robert M. Guinn, Publisher

Judy-Lynn Benjamin, Associate Editor Mavis Fisher, Circulation Director

NOVELETTES

THE GUERILLA TREES 44

by H. H. Hollis

THE MOTHER SHIP 81

by James TIptree, Jr.

HOUSE OF ANCESTORS 101

by Gene Wolfe

THE BIRD-BRAINED NAVIGATOR 132

by A. Bertram Chandler

SERIAL

ROGUE STAR 10

by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson ^

SHORT STORIES

CAGE OF BRASS 71

by Samuel R« Delany

PUBLISH AND PERISH 121

by John Thomas

FEATURES

EDITORIAL 6

by Frederik Pohl

SF CALENDAR 158

HUE and CRY 161

Cover by BODE from CAGE OF BRASS

IF published monthly by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Robert M. Guinn.
President, Vol 18, No. 6 Main Office: 421 Hudson Street, New York, 10014.
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stamped envelope. The Publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited
materlaL All stories are fiction, and any similarity between characters and
actual persons Is coincidental.

Printed In the U.S.A. by the Guinn Company. New York, N.Y. 10014

Paid Advertiiement

We the undersioned believe the United States
must remain in Vietnam to fulfill its responsi-
bilities to the people of that country.

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IF • Editorial

TOMORROWS TO ORDER

If you read our fiister mai^azine,
Galaxy, and in paiiscolar if
you’ve read the June issue, you al-
ready know everything we’re going
to say in these two pages and so you
can get right on with the stories,
Hue & Cry, etc.

If not — well, first take a look
at the full-page ^vertisements that
oocnament this sectkm.

You will find that two of them
are tmusual in that they are pre-
pared and paid for by the science-
fiction writers themselves. They
place the body of science-fiction
writers squarely on record on the
question of Vietnam. (Only trouble
is that there are about as many in
favor of picldng up our marbles and
leaving as there in favor of banging
on, no matter what.)

The third is also unusual hi that
it is an appeal to you to do some-

thing about the problem suggested
by the other two; That is, we are
trying to get the highly intelligent,
sophisticate alert and well informed
science-fiction community (at least,
that’s the way we always describe
ourselves, isn't it?) to turn away
from taking ponitions on the Viet-
namese problem, and begin the much
more demanding task of trying to
solve it.

Is this a reasonable hope? Is there
any chance at all that we science-
fiction types, readers and writers
alike, will be able to contribute any-
thing very useful to a problem that
has nearly destroyed one country
and caus^ enormous physical or
social damage to two others? —
bearing in mind that every politician,
columnist and Big Thinker on five
continents has already had his own

What Would YOU
Do About Vietnam?

Assume you are being asked for advice. Assume the people who
ask you are the President of the United States, the Congress, the
State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff — anyone and/or
everyone who has any decision-making authority concerning Ameri-
can involvement in Vietnam. Assume they want one suggestion
from you . . . and assume they will follow it.

What would you tell them to do?

Don't tell them. Tell us. We will take the most provocative and
seemingly productive suggestions received, submit them to problem-
solving analysis, and present the results in a forthcoming issue
of Galaxy.

The Rules

1. Anyone is eligible to enter, and may submit as many entries as he
likes. Each entry must be on a separate sheet of paper, one side only,
and Include your name and address. All entries will b^ome the property
of Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Please limit yourself to a maximum
of 100 words for each entry, preferably In the form of (a) your suggestion,

(b) followed, if you wish, by a statement of why you think it worth doing.

2. Suggestions may be on any areo of American involvement In Vietnam
— ways of winning the war, ways of bringing about a peaceful settlement,
whatever you think would be of value.

3. Five prizes of $100 each will be awarded to those entries which,
in the opinion of the fudges, best deserve them. In the event of duplicate
suggestions, the first entries received will get the prize. Judges will con-
sist of, or be appointed by, the Editors of Galaxy Publishing Corporation.
Winners will be notified by mall, and their names will be published tn a
forthcoming Issue of this magazine.

4. Send your entries toi "What Would You Do About Vietnam?",
Galaxy Publishing Corporation, 421 Hudson Street, New York, N.Y. 10014.
Entries must be received by July 4th, 1968, to be eligible for prizes.

say on what everyone concerned
ought to do next?

The way we look at it, if there is
no such chance it's up to us to invent
one. Certainly the world's leaders
have accomplished very little.

And maybe — just maybe, to be
sure — we of the free imaginations
and untrammeled creative instincts
may be able to find some new paths
to walk that might ultimately lead
us out of the manmade jungle that
is threatening to wreck our society
faster than technology can put it
together again.

At any rate, we think it’s worth
a try.

So play the game with us, please.
Put yourself in the position of the
President of the Unil^ States, the
Senate, the Combined Chiefs of
Staff — of any power figure or
group that you think can do any-
thing constructive about either win-
ning the war, or fmding a way to
stop it, or substituting some other
medhanism for the pointless slaught-
er and despoilation that is apparent-
ly our present method of choice.

How you solve it all, of course,
is up to you. If we had the solutions
we clearly wouldn^t need the contest.
But it seems apparent that there
are some panameterB. A military
solution would only be acceptable if
it carried with it some failnsafe
measure that would safegruard us
against reprisal from China or the
U.S.S.R. An injunction for the South

Vietnamese to take over more of
the fighting and carry out its pro-
grams of pacification, cleaning up
corruption and so on is no good un-
less you can tell us how to make
these measures feasible. And so on.

But don't, on the other hand, bo
deterred from making a good, spe-
cific suggestion merely because it
would be hard to put into practice.
Because that's Step Two in our
program.

You see, once we get a sizeable
number of interesting ideas we
plan to submit them all to the judg-
ments of as competent a pan^ of
experts as we can obtain. The panel
will be asked to evaluate them in
terms of desirability, feasibility and
effectiveness . . . and to suggest
ways of improving them in all those
terms.

If you've beeo. reading If and
Galaxy for very long it will be no
surprise to you that we think so-
ciety's only hope of solving the
problems our technology has created
for us lies in employing technology's
own problem-solving techniques on
them. And that's what we are plan-
ning to do. .The results, whatever
they may be, will be reported in
these magazines as they happen.
Will it all work?

We don't know. We can offer
hopes, but no (giiarantees. But does
anyone have any better ideas?

— Prederik Pohl

I E

If You^re o Subscriber— |

I — and if the address on your subscription copies does not con- I

I tain your Zip Code number — pleose drop us a line to let us |

I know what it Is, |

And If You Aren't — Why Not Subscribe Todoy? |

§ s

m3.

Secrets
entrusted
to a
few

^heVnpu££u^^ed^aeb^o^M^

THERE are some things that cannot
be generally told — things you ou^Ht to
knotty. Great truths are dangerous to
some — but factors for personal power
and accomplishment in the hands of
those who understand them. Behind
the tales of the miracles and mysteries
of the ancients, lie centuries of their
secret probing into nature*s laws^
their amazing discoveries of the hid-
den processes of man's mind, and the
mastery of life's problems. Once shroud-
ed in mystery to avoid their destruc-
tion by mass fear and ignorance, these
facts remain a useful heritage for the
thousands of men and women who pri-
vately use them in their homes today.

THIS FREE BOOK

The Rosicrucians (not a religious

organization) an age-old brotherhood
of learning, have preserved this secret
wisdom in their archives for centu-
ries. now invite you to share the

practical helpfulness of their teachings.
Write today for a free copy of the
book, *The Mastery of Life.” Within
its pages may lie a new life of oppor-
tunity for you. Address: Scribe e.k.R.

I SEND THIS COUPON 1

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(AMORC) SAN JOSE. CALIFORNIA 95114. U.S.A.

PART ONE

IF • Serial

STAR

by FREDERIK POHL and JACK WILLIAMSON

nUistroied by

In a universe where stars and men
were Joined as brothers, something
new — and dangerous! — was born

I that would whisk him across the in-

terstellar gulfs between star and star,

His name was Andreas Quamodi- he looked out of place. He didn’t
an, short, stout, self-important, look like the sort of man who would
Waiting his turn to enter the lu- be engaged in business important
minous iris of the transflex cube, enou^ to justify the use of the

transflex cube. But he didn’t look
like the sort of man on whom the
lives of countless billions of beings
might depend; and» curiously, he was
both those things.

The control dome flashed a signal
to him as he entered the ramp.
“Identification, sir?”

“Ridiculous,” muttered Andy Qua-
modian. “Silly red tapel” But he let
his flyer hover while he sorted out
the documents of his interstellar
citizenship. The dome extended a
long, nimble finger of pale plasma
to scan his passport.

The passport bore his ident num-
ber, an endless row of binary digits.
Below it another line translated the
numbers into the universal language:

Name: Andreas Quamodian.

Race: Human.

Birthplace: New Europe, Planet 5,
Star 4894, Sector B-311-C, Galaxy
1.

Organization: Companions of the
Star.

Status: Monitor.

Priority: —

But the last line was blank. “Hur-
ry up, will you?” Quamodian bark-
ed. “Can’t you see Fm in a hurry?”

. The tendril of plasma turned the
passport disk about, catching in it a
reflection of his dark, round face.
“Destination, sir?” the control dome
inquired.

“Earth. That’s — confound it, let
me see — yes, that’s Planet 3, Star
7718, Sector Z-989-Q, Galaxy 5.
Route me through the Wisdom Creek
station. Octant 5.”

The plasma tendril winked out.
Quamodian caught the passport disk
as it dropped and stowed it away,

then resumed his inching crawl to-
ward the cube. A long silver tank, no
doubt filled with a liquid citizen, was
vanishing through the closing gate.
Behind it a multiple creature followed
a horde of small, bright, black things,
hopping and tumbling inside a com-
munal cloud of luminous blue mist
A gray-scaled dragon shuffled just
ahead of Quamodian, burdened with
a bright metal turret on its back that
probably housed unseen symbiotes.
Winking crystal ports in the turret
peeked at Quamodian.

As Quamodian inched after the
dragon a flashing signal halted him.
“Sir,” said the control dome, “we
have no record of your priority for
this trip.”

great stars,” cried Quamo-
dian, “can’t you see I’m in a
hurry?” But grumbling, he held up
a scrap of yellow transfac film for
the plasma sensor to scan. The plas-
ma hesitated and recoiled.

“Sir, that document is not in the
universal language,”

“Of course not!” Quamodian
snapped. “It’s in English. Read it!”
“I have no equivalence data for
‘English,’ sir.”

“Well, then I’ll translate it. It’s
transmitted from Earth — that’s the
mother planet of my race, you know.
The sender is a girl — I mean, a
youthful female human creature —
named Molly Zaldivar. Her message
is addressed to me. It is of great im-
portance, and — ”

“Sir.” Ahead the multiple creature
had already disappeared into the
transflex cube and the dragon was
lumbering forward. “You are delay-

< mg transshipment 1 ask for your pri-
ority authorization now/’

‘Tm giving it to you! Listen to
what she says: *Dear Andy, please
forgive me for leaving you so rudely.
If you can, come to Earth at once.
The local Companions have never
heard of rogue stars; they won’t pay
any attention to my warnings. But —
Andy, dear Andy, I’m frightened!
Rogue men are in contact with
rogue stars right now, and I have no
hope but you!’”

“Sir, that is not an acceptable pri-
ority. Please leave the ramp!”
“Confound you,” shouted Quamo-
dian, “don’t you understand? That’s
priority enough for anything! That’s
a threat to the whole human race!”
“Sir. The human race is identified
in my files as an insignificant little
breed of barbarians, just recently ad-
mitted to provisional citizenship. No
human being is authorized to issue a
priority for interstellar travel,”

“But they may be in grave danger
of — ”

“Sir, please leave the ramp. You
may apply through official channels
for authorization for your trip.”
“There’s no time! The danger is
urgent!” The dome did not reply,
but ominously the plasma tendi^
thickened and began to spread.
^‘Wait!” Quamodian cried desperate-
ly. “I’m a member of the order of
Companions of the Star! Surely you
know of them. Our mission is to pro-
tect humanity, and other races, too.”
“My indices do not show any au-
thorization issued to you for this
journey by the Companions of the
Star, sir. You are holding up traffic.
Please move off the ramp.”

ROGUE STAR

Quamodian glanced bleakly at the
citizen crowding behind him: Forty
tons of sentient mineral, granite*
hard, jagged and black, afloat on its
own invisible transflection field and
impatiently extending its own pass-
port at the tip of a blue finger of
plasma. “Don’t shove. Citizen!” he
barked. ‘There’s been a misunder-
standing. Listen, Control. Check your
records. We humans are allied to the
multiple citizen named Cygnus, which
is a symbiotic association of fusori-
ans, stars and men. Its chief star is
Almalik...or don’t you care about
sentient stars any more than you do
about men?”

His irony was wasted on the dome.
“Get out of line,” its signal flashed
imperatively. Then, a split-second
later. “You may wait on the side of
the ramp. The multiple citizen Cyg-
nus is listed on our indices. We will
call the star Almallk, in Galaxy 5.

Disgruntled, Quamodian switched
his flyer out of line, giving up
his place to the granite citizen, who
passed him with an air of disdain. He
hovered impatiently at the edge of
the ramp, watching the gate ahead
expand again as it swallowed the
gray-scaled dragon and its turret of
symbiotic fellows.

For a moment Quamodian thought
of making a mad dash for the iris
aperture, but there was no sense in
that. However fast his flyer moved,
the dome would be faster; and then
he would be even longer delayed fti
getting to Earth.

He snatched a light-pen and scrib-
bled hastily on his message panel:
“Molly, I’m having a little trouble.

But I’m coming, as fast as I can.”
He added the routing information
and watched the hungry tongue of
plasma lick away the photons in the
message, storing them as spin-vari-
ances in an electron cloud. He knew
that his invisible package of tagged
electrons was already enroute for the
transflex fields around the cube, auto-
matically seeking out the fastest
route though the shifting sub-uni-
verses of transflection to home in on
Molly’s distribution point.

With any luck, he would follow
at the same speed, arriving almost
as fast as the message. But if his luck
was low ... if the monitor dome
would not permit him to pass . . .

Quamodian shuddered and stared
blankly out at the horde of beings
slowly moving past him on the ramp.

He shook himself. “Divert me,”
he said harshly.

At once a more than humanly so-
prano voice began to sing from some-
where inside his flyer: “5/, m/, chi-
amano Mimi . . .”

“No. Not opera.”

The voice fell silent. A holograph
of a chessboard appeared on the
communications panel, the pieces set
up for a game; White’s King’s
Pawns slid forward two spaces and
waited for his reply.

“I don’t want to play chess, either.
Wait a minute. Set up a probability
matrix for me. Estimate the chances
of the star Almalik granting me a
priority.”

.“With running analysis, or just
the predicted expectancy, Mr. Qua-
modian?” asked the voice of the
flyer.

With analysis. Keep me amused.”

“Well, sirl By gosh, there’s a lot
of stuff you got to consider, like — ”

“Without the comedy ^alect,”

“Certainly, Mr. Quamodian. These
are the major factors. Importance
of human race in universal civiliza-
tion: low. Approximately point-five
trillion humans, scattered on more
than a hundred stellar systems in
three galaxies; but these represent
only about one one-hundreth of one
per cent of the total population of
universal civilization, even counting
multiple and group intellects as sin-
gles. Concern of star Almalik with
individual human Andreas Quamodi-
an, negligible.”

What about the concern of Alma-
lik for the Companions of the Star?”
cried Quamodian angrily.

“Coming to that, Mr. Quamodian.
Concern rated as well under noise
level on a shared-time basis, but in-
serting the real-time factor makes it
low but appreciable. So the critical
quantity in the equation is the rele-
vance of the term ‘rogue star.’ I
have no way of estimating the star
Almalik’s reaction to that, Mr. Qua-
modian.”

“The rogue stars are the most im-
portant phenomena in the universe,”
said Quamodian, staring out at the
ramp.

“In that case — hum — allow-
ing for pressure of other affairs; you
haven’t kept up with the news, but
there have been some unpleasant
events on Earth — let’s see, I give
it point seven probability, Mr. Qua-
modian. One hundred fourteen vari-
ables have been considered. They are
respectively — ”

“Don’t bother.”

no bother, Mr. Quamodian,”
said the machine, a little sulkily.
They were all moody, these compan-
ionship-oriented ship’s contrcd mech-
anisms; it was the price you had to
pay for free conversation. Quamodian
said soothingly:

“You’ve done well. It’s just that
I’m upset over the danger represented
by the rogue star.”

“I can understand that, Mr. Qua-
modian,” said the machine warmly,
responding at once. “A threat to
one’s entire race — ”

“1 don’t give a hoot about the
human racel”

“Why Mr. Quamodian! Then
what — ”

“It’s Molly Zaldivar I care about.
Make a note of this, you hear? Never
fOTget it: The welfare of Molly
Zaldivar is the most important thing
in the universe to me, b^use 1 love
her with all my heart In spite of —

Quamodian thought bleakly of
Molly Zaldivar, and Cliff Hawk,
and the day years before when she
had told him that it was Hawk she
loved.

“In spite of everything,” he fin-
ished. “Now shut up. The monitor’s
signalling — I guess my priority was
approved!”

TV yT <>Uy Zaldivar, nine years before.
-IVX Mdly was tall and lively, a
girl who sang and accompanied her-
sdf on an Earth guitar, a giii who
was loved by many a being in the
university where she and Andy Qua-
modian met. It was easy for Quamo-
dian to know why he loved her: the

laughter in her voice, even when ihe
sang the saddest ballads of the cdd
mother world; the skin tones that
changed from wannest ivory to
tawny gold under the queer shifting
light of the triple star in the uni-
versity’s sides. But — half the stu-
dents did not “hear,” at least on the
audio frequency range used by hu-
man beings; many of them did not
see with “visible” light. Yet all were
fond of Molly Zaldivar.

There were only three hundred
humans in the school. Andy Qua-
modian, already serious, a little pud-
gy, dark and slow. Molly Zaldivar,
like a golden flame, her bright hair
catching ruddy glints from the red
giant star above them, her dark eyes
flashing the violet light of the dwarf.
And — Cliff Hawk.

Even after nine years, Andreas
Quamodian still scowled at the
thought of Cliff Hawk. He was a
rogue in the society of men, a rogue
in the university, brooding, angry.
Tall, gaunt, restless, he had shaggy
black hair and burning blue eyes.
Where Molly and Quamodian had
come from old Earth itself, sent to
the university on linguistic fellow-
ships to learn the myriad communi-
cations-forms of the galaxies, Cliff
Hawk was a technician. His ancestors
had roamed the Reefs of Space, fugi-
tives from the old interplanetary em-
pire called the Plan of Man. Their
prideful blood still burned in his
veins. He loved Molly Zaldivar —
carelessly and roughly, with a cer-
tainty that she would sacrifice her
own career for any of his whims.
Whereas Andy Quamodian only wor-
shipped her.

ROGUE STAR

When it came time for Molly Zal-
divar to choose, she really had not
had a choice. Andy Quamodian
could see that now — what choice
between plodding little Andy Quam
and the dark, dangerous man from
the borderland of space?

But he had not seen it at the time;
and the moment when Molly Zaldi-
var sent him away still burned, nine
years later . , .

44^^^ou are not paying attention,
Mr. Quamodian,” the flyer
reprimanded him. ”The control dome
is signalling.”

“What? — Oh, sorry.” Quamodian
gave orders, and the flyer swam back
into the stream of traffic. A stalked
horror of a citizen with members
like bamboo shoots and a frond of
brain tissue like a skirt around its
waist had paused, was waiting for
him to precede it into the transflex
tube.

“Your attention, sir!” flashed the
control dome. “The multiple citizen
Cy^us is fully qualified to issue pri-
orities for intergalactic travel. Alma-
lik, spokesman star for the citizen,
has granted you priority for immedi-
tae transit to Earth. You may enter
the transflex cube.”

“Thanks,” grumbled Quamodian,
and guided his flyer into the luminous
cavern of the cube.

A veteran of a good many inter-
galactic transits, Quamodian had nev-
er learned to enjoy them. The effects
of transflection varied with the in-
dividual. Some felt nothing; a few
reported pleasure or exhilaration.
Most, to whom transit was unpleas-
ant or terrifying, resorted to sleep

drugs or hypnosis to make the ex-
perience pass quickly. Quamodian
merely endured it.

He watched the dark diaphragm
contract behind him and at once
felt the flyer seem to pitch and veer.
Rotated out of space and time, rout-
ed by computation through the con-
gruent folds of a dozen or a hun-
dred parallel universes, he felt as he
always did: lost, and stunned, and
queasy.

The blue walls flickered and dis-
solved into a darkening, grayish haze.
A queer roaring came hollowly from
nowhere, swelling in his ears. Numb-
ing cold drove through him, as if
every tissue of his body had some-
how been plunged into the dark zero
of the space between galaxies . . .

But then the careening flyer stead-
ied. “Prepare to emerge, Mr. Qua-
modian,” it sang in his ear, and the
roaring storm of sound and sensa-
tion died away.

The shining walls were real again.
But now they were greenish-gray
instead of blue, and painted in bold
black characters with the identifying
characters of the Wisdom Creek Sta-
tion on Earth. Ahead of him the
exit gate expanded.

There was no traffic here, no
waiting line of citizens enduring the
delays that beset their important
business, no bustle of intergalactic
civilizations. It was quiet and pas-
toral,

Andy Quamodian leaned forward
as the flyer glided out of the cube
and looked for the first time in his
adult life on the warm, broad acres
that were lit by the single sun of
Earth.

minutes later the charm
•Li- and the nostalgia were gone,
and Quamodian was snapping furi-
ously at his flyer. “What do you
mean, you can’t reach Miss Zaldi-
var? I just sent her a message ...”
“Your message has not been de-
livered, Mr. Quamodian. Her com-
munications circuits have been block-
ed; she wishes to accept no calls.”
“Nonsensel And the local office of
the Companions of the Star ...”
“Also blocked, Mr. Quamodian. A
local custom. I have been assured
that in fourteen hours, local time,
they will be at your service, but until
then — ”

“Don’t be a fool I” Quamodian
shouted. “I can’t wait that long! Here,
I’ll go to the office myself!”

“Certainly, Mr. Quamodian.” The
flyer began to settle toward a dusty
plaza m front of the transflex tower.
“Of course,” it added apologetically,
“you will have to go on foot. By lo-
cal custom, flyers are not permitted
to operate more than one hundred
meters from the transflex center at
this time.”

“Great Almalik! Oh, very well.”
Fussily Quamodian collected himself
and stamped out of the opening door.
“Which way?”

A voice by his ear answered, as
the flyer activated its external speak-
ers: “Down this street, Mr. Quamo-
dian. The gold building with the en-
sign of the Companions.”

He turned and stared. Behind him,
the flyer quietly rose, drifted back
to the tall, tapered, black transflex
tower and settled to wait at its base.
Quamodian was alone on the planet
of his birth.

He was 4^e resized, more alone
than he had expected. He knew that
parts of Earth were stiB scarcely
ulated — nothing like the teeming
metrapolises of the hub-worlds of
the universe, nothing like ev^ the
relatively minor planets of his uni-
versity training and recent practical
experience.

But he had not expected Earth,
even this part of Earth, to be empty.

Yet there was not a soul in si^t
He peered back toward the trans-
flex tower: his waiting flyer, mo-
tionless and peaceful; noting else.
He looked down a long artificial-
stone boulevard: a school building a
hospital, a few supply centers . . .
and no one in sight. He saw a park
with benches and a playground, but
no one was near any of them; saw
parked* vehicles, seemingly aban-
doned, a library without readers, a
fountain with no one to watch its
play.

“Ridiculous,” he grumbled, and
walked toward the building that
glinted in the sun.

Earth’s single star was hot, and
the full gravity of his home planet
was more than Andreas Quamodian
had been used to for a good many
years. It was a tiring walk. But there
was something pleasant about it,
about the dusty smell of the hot
pavement and the luminous young,
green leaves of the trees that over-
hung the walk. Peace lay over the
village, like a benediction of Almalik.

But Quamodian had not come to
Earth in search of peace. He in-
creased his stride, and chugged up
the walkway, beside the flagpole that
bore the standard of the Compan-

ROGUE STAR

ions of the Star: the thirteen colored
stars of Alofialifc in the dotted ellipses
of their intricate orbits, against a
black field of space.

The door did not open for him.

Quamodian nearly ran into it;
he only stopped just in time.

“What the devil’s the matter here?”
he demanded, more surprised than
angry — at least at first. “I am
Andreas Quamodian, a monitor of
the Companions of the Star. Admit
me at once!”

But the bright crystal panel did not
move. “Good morning. Citizen Qua-
modian,” said a recorded robot-
voice. “The Wisdom Creek post of
the Companions of the Star is closed
today, in observance of local religious
custom. It will be open as usual on
Monday.”

“I’ll report this!” Quamodian
cried. “Mark my words! I’ll call the
Regional Office of the Companions
of the Star — ”

“A public communications instru-
ment is just to your left. Citizen
Quamodian,” the robot-voice said
politely. “It is cleared for emergency
use even on Starday.”

“Emergency, eh? You bet it’s an
emergency!” But Quamodian had had
enough of arguing with recorded
voices. He stalked along the flank of
the gold-colored ceramic building to
the communications booth, angrily
dialed the code for the Regional Of-
fice . • • and found himself talking to
another recorded voice.

‘"Companions of the Star, Third
Octant Office,” it said briskly.

“Oh, confound — Never mind.
Listen. 1 am Monitor Quamodian.

I am in Wisdom Credr to investigate
a reported emergency, and 1 find the
local office closed. This lax opera-
tion is highly irregular! I demand the
office be opened and — ”

“Monitor Quamodian,” reproved
the robot voice, ‘"this is impossible.
Under our revised covenant with the
Visitants, no local posts operate on
Stardays so that local personnel may
be free to engage in voluntary reli-
gious activities. Even Regional Offices
are machine-operated during this —
‘"But this is an emergency! Can’t
you understand?”

""Monitor Quamodian, my sensors
detect no emergency situation in
Wisdom Creek.”

"‘That’s what I’m here for! I —
well, I don’t know the exact nature
of the emergency, but I require im-
mediate assistance — ”

‘"Our Wisdom Creek post will
open promptly at midnight, local
time,” the voice informed him bland-
ly. "‘Competent assistance will bo
available then.”

“Midni^t will be too — ”

But the line clicked, buzzed and
settled to a steady hum.

Muttering with anger, Quamodian
tried Molly Zaldivar’s code. But his
flyer had been right; there was no
answer.

Puffing with irritation as much as
fatigue, Quamodian lowered himself
to the steps of the office of the Com-
panions and scowled at the empty
street. How many hundreds of thou-
sands of light-years had he spanned
to be here, on this day, in this back
wash of life? What tremendous forces
had he enlisted to hurl him across the
gulfs of space, to race against the

dreadful fears that Molly Zaldivar’s
message had conjured up
He licked' dry lips and wiped per-
spiration from his brow. He was a
hero, ready to rescue maiden, towns-
people, world itself. But none of
them appeared to want to be rescued.

Ill

Twenty-five miles southwest of
Wisdom Creek, Molly Zaldivar
did want to be rescued. At that mo-
ment she wanted it very badly.

Her old blue electric car had
whined up the rocky mountain road,
three thousand feet above the plain;
below her she saw the flat, dry
valley with the little town of Wisdom
Creek huddled around the twin spires
of the Transflex tower and the
church. But now the road went no
farther. It dipped, circled a spur of
the mountainside, and went tumbling
into the other valley beyond. From
here on she would have to walk . . .
But that she could not do.

Above her she heard the restless,
singing rustle of the creature Cliff
Hawk called a sleeth. She could not
see it. But she could imagine it there,
tall as a horse but far more massive,
black as space and sleek as her own
hair. And she knew that at that mo-
ment she was closer to death than
she had ever been before.

She tiptoed silently back to the
car, 'eyes on the rocks over her head.
The singing sound of the creature
faded away and returned, faded away
and came back again. Perhaps it had
not detected her. But it might at any
moment, and then —

Molly entered the car and closed

the door ' gently, not latching it.
Breathing heavily — partly from
nerves, partly from the thin, higjh air
around her — she picked up her com-
municator and whispered, “Cliff?
Will you answer me. Cliff, please?”
There was no sound except for the
faint sound of the sleeth, and the
even fainter whisper of wind around
the mountaintop.

Molly bit her lip and glanced over
her shoulder. She dared not start the
car’s motor. It was not very loud, but
the sleeth was far too close; it was
a wonder it hadn’t heard her coming
up the trail. But the road sloped
sharply away behind her. If she re-
leased the brakes the old car would
roll on its out-of-date wheels; it would
rattle and creak, but not at low
speeds, much. Not at first. And Cliff
had told her that the sleeth would
not wander more than a few hundred
yards from the cavemouth. She was
very close now, but the car would
roll out of range in not much more
than a minute. . . •

But then what? Cliff did not an-
swer. She had to see him — had to
stop whatever he was doing, teamed
with the rude, hard man who owned
the sleeth. She would never be any
closer than this, and what hope was
there that the sleeth would be else-
where if she tried again another time
anyway?

“bh, please, Cliff,” she whispered
to the communicator, “it’s Molly and
I’ve got to talk to you. ...”

There was a rattle of pebbles and
dust, and Molly craned her neck
to look upward in sudden terror.
There was the sleeth, eyes huge as

ROGUE STAR

a man’s head, green as the light from
a radium-dial watch. It was perched
over her, the bright, broad eyes star-
ing blindly across the valley. It was
graceful as a cat, but queerly awk-
ward as it floated in its transflection
field, clutching at the rubble with
claws that were meant for killing.

It did not seem to have seen her.
Yet.

Molly froze, her ears tuned to the
singing rustle of the sleeth. Its huge
muscles worked supply under the
fine-scaled skin, and the eyes slowly
turned from horizon to horiaon.
Then it drifted idly back behind the
rock, and Molly dared to breathe
again. “Oh, Cliff,” she whispered,
but only to herself. She could not
bring herself to speak even in an un-
dertone to the communicator.

But even terror fades; the monkey-
mind of a human being will not stay
attuned even to the imminent threat
of death. Molly became aware of her
cramped position on the scarred plas-
tic seat of the car, cautiously straight-
ened her legs and sat up.

If only Cliff Hawk would hear her
message and come.

If only the sleeth would drift over
to the other side of the mountain,
give her a chance to make a mad
dash for the cavemouth and the men
inside.

If only — she was stretching for
impossibles now, she knew — if only
poor Andy Quam would respond to
her plea for help and come charging
out of the transflex tower with weap-
ons and wisdom and the strength
to do whatever had to be done to stop
Cliff from going through with this
dreadful work. ...

But they were all equally impossi-
ble. Cliff couldn’t hear her, the
sleeth wouldn’t go away. And as for
Andy Quam —

Even in her fear she couldn’t help
smiling. Poor old Andy, sober and
serious, loving and stuffy, full of
small rages and great kindnesses . . .
of all the rescuing heroes a girl
might imagine, surely he was the most
unlikely.

The singing sound of the sleeth
grew louder again, and fearfully she
looked upward. But it did not appear.

Even the Reefer would be welcome
now, she thought — that gaunt yel-
low-bearded giant who was Cliff
Hawk’s ally in his folly. She was
afraid of the Reefer. He seemed like
a throwback to a monstrous age of
rage and rapine, a Vandal plunder-
ing a peaceful town, a Mau-Mau
massacring sleeping children. He had
always been polite enough to her,
of course, but there was something
about him that threatened devasta-
tion. Not that any additional threats
were necessary. What Cliff was doing
was bad enough in itself! Creating
sentient life at the atomic level — try-
ing to breed living, thinking tissue of
the same stuff that was at the core of
the sapient stars themselves. And
worst of all, trying to duplicate in the
laboratory the kind of life that made
some stars rogues, pitted them against
their fellows in a giant struggle of
hurled energies and destroying bolts
of matter.

She grinned suddenly, thinking
again of Andy Quam: imagine pitting
him against the Reefer! Why, he. . . .

Molly Zaldivar sat bolt upright.

She had just realized that the sing-

ing sound of the sleeth was gone.
The only noise on the mountain was
the distant, moaning wind.

She waited for a long moment,
gathering her courage, then slipped
quietly from the seat. She stood be*
side it, ready to leap back inside and
flee, however useless that would be
... but the sleeth was still out of
range.

Carefully, quietly she took a step
up the rock path, and another. A
pebble spun and grated under her
feet. She paused, heart pounding —
but there was no response.

Another step . • • and another. . . •

She was at the top of the path
now. To her right the cavemouth
waited, rimmed with crystal, a rubble
of junked laboratory equipment in
front of it. No one was in sight.
Not even — especially not — the
sleeth.

Molly broke into a trot and hur-
ried toward the cavemouth.

At that moment the sleeth appear-
ed, rocketing over the crest of the
mountain, coming down directly to-
ward her like a thrown spear. She
could see its great blind eyes staring
directly into hers; it was moving at
sonic velocities, hundreds of miles an
hour; it would be on her in a second.
**Cliffr she shrieked, and flung her-
self toward the cavemouth.

She never reached it.

From inside the cave a great puff
of black smoke came hurtling out in
a perfect vortex ring. The concussion
caught her and lifted her off her
feet, threw her bruisingly to the
ground. The sound followed a mo-
ment later and was deafening, but by
then Molly was past caring; explo-

sion, painful skin lacerations, raging
sleeth, all blended together in a slow
fading sensation, and she was un-
conscious.

What was real and what was
dream? Molly opened her eyes
dizzily and saw the gaunt bleeding
face of Cliff Hawk staring down at
her, aghast. She closed them again,
and someone — someone, something,
some voice — was calling to her,
and she saw Someone trapped and
raging, commanding her to come . . .
“Wake up! Confound you, Molly!’’
“I’m awake, dearest,” she said,
and opened her eyes. It was Cliff.
‘We’ve got to get him out of there,”
she said earnestly. “He’s lost and trap-
ped — ”

“Who? What are you talking
about?”

She caught her head in her hands,
suddenly aware of how much it hurt.
“Why — ” She looked up at Cliff
Hawk, puzzled. “I forget.”

He grimaced. “You’re confused,”
he announced. “And a pest, besides.
What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to stop you,” she said
dizzily. She was trying to remember
what the very important thing was
that Someone had said to her in her
dream. If it had been a dream.

“Thought so. And look what you’ve
done! As if I didn’t have enough
trouble.”

Molly abandoned the fugitive
memory. “There was an explosion,”
she said. “I got hurt.”

Cliff Hawk looked suddenly less
angry, more worried. Clearly Molly
was telling him nothing he didn’t al-
ready know. The rivulet of blood

ROGUE STAR

that ran down from a scrape on his
forehead divided around his nose,
blurred itself in the blue stubble of
beard on his cheeks and chin. It made
him look like a dangerous clown.
But a clown with some great fear
riding his back.

“We — we had an accident.
Molly, go back to Wisdom Creek.”
She shook her head and then,
without preamble, began to cry.

. Hawk swore violently, but his
touch was gentle as he reaped swift-
ly down, caught her shoulders, help-
ed her to her feet and into the cave.
Molly let herself weep without shame,
but it did not keep her from seeing
that the cave was in fact a work-
shop, lined with glittering metal, rich
with instruments and machines. A
corona of pale violet hung over a
humming golden globe, now soiled
and dented from whatever it was
that had exploded nearby. She heard
the distant howl of a power tube,
screaming to itself like the bass-C
of a steam calliope as it sucked energy
from the air. She let him find her a
seat on a wobbly laboratory stool,
accepted a tissue and dabbed at her
nose.

“You’ve got to go back,” Cliff
Hawk told her with rough tender-
ness. “I’m busy.”

“You’re in trouble!” she corrected.
“It’s dangerous, Cliff. Leave the
rogue stars alone! I’ll go back to
Wisdom Creek if you come with me.”
“I can’t. We’ve had this out be-
fore.”

“But you’re risking your life — ■
the whole world — ”

“Molly.” Awkwardly he touched
her shoulder. “I can’t stop. Even if it

costs me my life. £v^ if it destroys
the world. Did you mean it wh^
you said you loved me? Then go back
and leave me alone.”

A ndy Quam puffed around the cor-
ner and shouted: “Say, there!
Wait a minute, will you?”

The three boys he had spied were
ambling down the dusty road, yards
away. They paused and looked
around at him, politely curious.
“Morning, preacher,” nodded one of
them. “Help you?”

“Yes. I hope so, anyway. I mean
— well, where is everyb^y?”
“Starday, preacher. All off wor-
shipping mostly. ’Cept us.”

“I’m not a preacher, yoimg man.”
The boy looked him over. “Then
why do you wear that funny suit?”
Quamodian blushed. “It’s the uni-
form of the Companions of the Star.
I’m Monitor Quadmodian. “I’m try-
ing to find — ”

“Gee, preacher!” The boy was
showing the first real signs of in-
terest now. “Companion of the Star?
Then you go all over the gala»es,
honest? And see all the funny Citi-
zens with the green skins and the two
heads and — ”

“It is very impolite to make fun
of a Citizen’s appearance,” said Andy
Quam severely. “We are all equally
star-shared.”

“Oh, sure. Gee! Ever seen a sun
go nova, preacher? Or fought am-
monia creatures on a gas giant,
or — ”

Andy Quam said honestly, “Young
man, my task has been mostly super-

visory and statistical. 1 have had no
adventures of any kind. Except this
one.’*

“You’re having an adventure
now?**

“Well, I’m not sure. But there’s
something very serious going on. I’m
looking for Molly 2Mdivar.”

The second boy, a chubby redhead,
spoke up. “Gone to the hills, preach-
er. Looking for her friends, I bet.”

“Shut up, Rufe! They’re not her
friends!”

“Who are you telling to shut up,
Rob? Just because you’re soft on
Molly Zaldivar — ”

“I’m warning you, Rufe!”

“What’s the secret? Elverybody
knows you’re stuck on her. And ev-
erybody knows she likes that fellow
that lives in the cave — Get your
hands off me!”

Andy Quam grabbed them hasti-
ly. “Boys! If you’re going to fight,
please wait till I’m finished with
you. Did you say you know where
Molly is?”

The redhead broke free and
brushed himself off, glowering at the
other boy. “About thirty miles from
here. Bet she is, an5rway. Gone to
the cave where the fellow lives with
the Reefer and that animal. Kill
themselves one day, my father says.”

“How do I get there?” Andy
Quam demanded.

“Why — No way, preacher. Not
on Starday. Unless you want to
walk.”

“But it’s very important — ” Qua-
modian stopped himself. The boy was
probably right. Still, it was already
late afternoon, local time on this
part of the planet, and at midnight

he would be able to get things
straightened out. He said, “What’s a
Reefer?”

“Man from the Reefs of Space, of
course. Got one of those Reef ani-
mals with him. They call it a sleeth.”
“Big one,” the third boy said sud-
denly. “My brother claims it can kill
you soon’s look at you.”

“Killed three hunting dogs al-
ready,” confirmed Rufe. “I wouldn’t
go near it for anything,” he added
virtuously. “My father told me not
to.”

Andy Quam looked at him thought-
fully. He said, “I’ll bet you can tell
me how to get there, though.”
“Might, preacher.”

“You covUd even show me, if you
wanted to.”

“Get in trouble with my dad if I
did.”

“Uh-huh. Say, boys. Back in my
flyer I’ve got some rare candies from
a planet in Galaxy 5. Care to try
them? — Then maybe you can teU
me a little more about this cave.

The boys clamored for a ride in
the flyer. The hundred-meter
limitation was still in effect, but
Andy Quam shepherded them all in-
side, closed the doors and ordered
the flyer to rise to its legal limit and
hover. It was the best he could do
for them. And good enough, to judge
from their shouts and yells as they
thrust each other out of the way to
see from the ports.

For that matter, Andy was inter-
ested too. Apart from his burning
anxiety to find Molly Zaldivar as fast
as possible, this was old Earth, home
of Man.

ROGUE STAR

He felt a vague disappointment as
he looked from the hovering flyer.
He had expected fast, fantastic an-
cient cities, or at least the fabulous
monuments and ruins of the long hu-
man past. But there was nothing like
that The land that sloped away from
Wisdom Creek was reddish-brown
and empty. The village itself was a
disappointment Only the Starchurch
looked striking from the air, star-
shaped, five pointed wings projecting
from its central dome. The roofs and
colunms of the wings were all a daz-
zling white, the dome itself black as
space and transparent, with brilliant
images of the thirteen component
suns of Almalik swimming within it
“That’s my house there, iM:each-
er,” cried Rufus. “And see that road?
Goes out to the mountains. That’s
where Miss Zaldivar is.”

Andy Quamodian leaned forward,
over their heads, and peered into
the distance. The village cradled in
in the bend of a stream. To the south
a dam across the stream made a long,
narrow lake, crossed by a trestle that
carried a road toward the high, hazed
hills at the horizon. “That’s thirty
miles, you said?”

“Nearer twenty-five, preacher.”
“Which hill is it?”

“Can’t tell from here. Have to
show you. Can’t show you today, not
till the Peace of Starday*s over.”
Quamodian looked at him sharply.
The boy’s tone was — what? Cynical?
Merely disinterested? “How come
you’re not in church?” he asked.

The boy’s face was impassive. “We
don’t cotton to the Star,” he said.
“My dad says the old religion’s good
enough for us.”

“But Almalik’s not opposed to any
other religion, boys. It’s not mysticaL
It’s — oh, you must have been
taught all ttel It’s a symbiotic asso-
ciation of stars and men and robots
and fu^orians, that’s all.”

“Course, preacher,” the boy said
politely. “You mentioned candy?”
Andy Quam wanted to say more,
but restrained himself. As a Monitor
of the Companions of the Star he had
been well drilled in the basic prin-
ciples of the symbiosis, but as a mat-
ter of fact, he realized, he had never
heard them questioned before. In
Galaxy 5, in the far worlds where
most citizens were non-human and
had no interest at all in his views,
in school where everyone nominally,
at least, shared the same services on
Starday, there had been either no
dissent or no interest at all. Perhaps
he’d got a bit rusty.

But he hadn’t thought, not for one
second had anything in his experi-
ence prepared him to think, that
here on the birthplace of the human
race there would still be opposition to
the Star! No wonder Molly Zaldivar
had had to send for him for help.
If these boys were representative.
Earth had no interest in the wide
universe outside.

While the boys were munching
the candies the flyer had pro-
duced for them from its stores,
transparent green jellies that pulsed
warmly as they were chewed and
filled the mouth with a fragrance of
unearthly flowers, Andy Quam said
diffidently: “But not everyboy’s like
you, are they? I mean, Molly Zaldi-
var’s in the Church of the Star. And

80 must others be, to justify that
church over there,”

“Oh, there’s plenty branded cattle
of the Star,” Rufe said chattily,
poking a bit of jelly from between
his teeth with a finger. “That’s what
my dad calls them. But Miss Zaldi-
var doesn’t go much. Sometimes she
teaches Starday school, but not late-
ly, far as I know.”

Anyway, that Church is pretty
old,” said the tallest boy. “I expect
it had a lot more people years ago.
And besides — Sweet Almalik!” he
cried. “Look there!”

The first thing Andy Quam
thought was that the boy had evident-
ly had more to do with the Church
of the Star than his father really ap-
proved of, using the name of Almalik
to ease his emotions. The second
thing was that that didn’t matter. The
boy’s face was suddenly stark and
afraid. Quamodian whirled, to face
where the boy was pointing.

And then he saw it, something that
violated the sweet peace of that
Starday afternoon. He saw a great
rope of fire, which seemed to extend
from the blinding red disk of the
setting sun. He saw it coiling like a
monstrous snake of fire in that se-
rene blue sky, thrusting savagely
down through the white tufts of cu-
mulus that drifted toward the moun-
tains.

“Preacher!” said Rufe, scared.
“What it is?”

But Quamodian did not know. It
looked almost like the. plasma effector
of some transcience intellect, except
that it was too enormous, its white
blaze too painfully bright.

Like a snake of fire attacking

from the sky it coiled and struck,
recoiled and struck again, recoiled
and struck three times into those
low, far hills. Then it withdrew,
sucked back into the setting sun.

A thin column of dark smoke rose
from the shallow gap where it had
struck. Presently an immense dull
booming, like far thunder, rumbled
out of the sky. The vast deep sound
rolled away, leaving the valley bath-
ed again in the sunlight of the serene
Starday afternoon.

“Preacher, what was it?” demand-
ed one of the boys, but Andy Qua-
modian could only shake his head.
Then his eyes widened, his jaw
dropped.

‘Those hills!” he cried. “Isn’t that
what you said — ”

“Yes, preacher,” whispered the
boy. “That’s where the cave is.
where Molly Zaldivar is right now.”

That distant voice was still whis-
pering to Molly, though she
couldn’t quite hear it, couldn’t quite
make out what it said or who it was
that spoke. But it was a terribly
pained voice, the sound of a mind in
rage and agony.

Cliff Hawk kept talking to her, de-
manding that she leave, harsh, even
threatening, warning her that there
was danger here. “Of course there’s
danger,” she cried suddenly. “Why do
you think I came? I want you to
stop!”

He sighed and looked at her. His
face was terribly lined, she saw.
Young, strong, quick, he had come in
the last few weeks to look old.

ROGUE STAR

‘'You want me to stoi^ and you
don’t even know what Fni
he said*

"You can remedy tfaaL’*

He looked away. After a moment
he turned to the violet-lishted globe
and studied it, still not q>eaktng. Then
he said:

“We’re searching for intelligence.
For minds anywhere not in transi-
ence contact with intergalactic sod^
ty. The Reefer and 1 have built our
own equipment — v^ sensitive
equipment — one contact turned oat
to be the hysterical mind of a small
human lost in the wiMemess of
a new planet out in Galaxy 9. But
the strangest contacts are the rogue
stars — ”

“What’s a rogue star?”

He probed a.t the dried blood be-
side his nose, thoughtfully. “Solitary
sentient stars,” he said. “They don’t
belong to the civilized community.
Most of those we’ve picked up —
all of them, maybe — are at enor-
mous distances outside our own ga-
lactic cluster. Yet somehow — ” He
hesitated, shrugged. “I don’t know
why. But they seem angered or
alarmed when they sense us.”

Molly Zaldivar shuddered. She
tried to remember something, but it
was outside the reach of her mind.

Cliff Hawk was lecturing now,
his eyes fastened on limitless space,
‘^Thinking machines are all alike.
Whether they are human brains or fu-
sorian committees or sentient stars
or computing robots, they all possess
certain common features. All thinking
things have inputs — from sensory
organs or tape readers or sensitive
plasmas. They all have data storage

^ fgggnfitie cores or neuron
or or #anscience pat-

tic^ T^ |Q have outputs through
motor organs ot servo machines or
plasma cffectois.”

Be stopped thoughtfully, seeming
to listen to the drone of energy fields
^lyi the scream of the power

tube. ”Oo on, dear. How do you tell
a rogue star from a lost boy?”

Hawk hesitated, as though
trying to relate the girl’s presence to
what he was talking about,. but she
urged him on with a nod. “Our steady-
state universe is infinite,” he sai^
^Tnily infinite. Endless. Not only in
space and time, but also in multi-
plkity.” The worry and resentment
faded from his wmm face as the
theory absorbed him. “The exploding
galaxies called quasars were the first
proof of that — galactic explo^ons,
resulting from extreme concentra-
tions of mass. Space is distorted into
a curved pocket around a dense con-
tracting galactic core. When the dense
mass becomes great enough, the pock-
et closes itself, separating from out
space-time continuum.”

He was in full flight now. Molly
heard a distant sighing, remembered
the sleeth and shivered. Was that
fearsome creature still lurking about?
But she did not dare interrupt him?

“The visible quasar explosion,” he
droned on, “results from the sudden
expansion of the remaining ^ell of
the galaxy, when it is released from
the gravitation of the lost core. Each
lost core, cut off from any ordinary
space-time contact with the mother
galaxy, becomes a new four-dimen-
sional universe, expanding by the
continuous creation of mass and space

until its own maturing galaxies begin
dninkhig past the gravitational limit,
budding more new univefses.”
From ibe caive mouth bloodrcol-
oced dodL seqied in, mangling with
the violet hues of the aurora. It was
growing hard to see me. MoQy stirred
restlesdy, stifling a sigh.

‘‘But the rogue star^” said Cliff
“are in our universe. Or we
think they are. Or — ”

“Or you^ talking too much,”
rumbled a new voice, and Molly
Zaldivar spun around to see a great
bear of a man, wearing a dirty ydlow
beard> peeriitg in at them from the
cavemoulh. luthe red ^om he look-
ed menacing, and far more menac-
ing still was the great restless bulk
of the creature beside him. The
sleeth.

Cliff Hawk blinked and returned
to reality. For a momenl his
gaze brushed MoHy Zaldhrar as
thoD^ he bad iorgoCten ^ was diere
and was astomsbed to fmd her. But
then his wbede diooght was concen-
trated cm the man at die cavemoutlL
“Reefer! What’s the word? How
bad is the damage?”

The Reefer opened a soundless
grin between dingy ydikfw mustache
and grimed yellow beard. “Bad
enoughs” he said. “But we’re still in
business. What happened?”

“I — I — ” Havdr glanced agaio
at Molly Zaldivar. “I was just cbedk-
ing in the cave when I heard Mc^ly
grcianing, and 1 — ”

“And you forgot everything
and went to her. Ah, that’s to be un-
derstood. A pretty face is more than
a star to you, ci course,”

Hawk shook his bead. “Fve been
tefiiiig her to go aiway.”

“Beyond doubt! That’s why you’re
lecturing the god hke a ebiid at
da^ scdmal, di?” He patted die great
bulk of the deeth. “We understand,
do we not?”

Hank gazed at the Reefer with
mm^d anger and apology, then
turned to Mdly. “I’m sorry,” he
said. “But the Reefer’s ri^t You’ve
got to go badt to Wisdom Creek.”
“No! Not until you tdl me what
you’re doing here!”

“Girl, he’s been telling you,” rumr
bled the Reefer. “What do you think
aH those words were, that he was
poarmg out at you wken I came in?
More than you need to know. More
than you should know, I think.”

“But noChiDg that made sense to
me,” Molly persisted. “How are you
trying to communicate with rogue
stars?”

The masdve head shook with
laitghler. “Communicate with them,
giri?^ Then maybe he didn’t tdl yon
alter aB. It’s not just communication
we’re after. We’re building them!”

Cliff Hawk broke the silence that
followed the Reefer’s words.
“Tbafs the troth of it, MoHy. Or
close aiougb. We can’t really com-
municate with the rogue stars, not
directly. We’ve fried that a thousand
times, and it’s past our abilities. But
we can — we think we can — build
a sort of matiiematical mod^l oi one.
An analogue, A small innfation, you
might call it. And through that, here
on Eardi, we may he able to reach
them, find out what we want to
know.”

ROGUE STAR

*'But that’s dangerousl” protested
Molly. **Area*t rogue stars terribly
dangerous?”

The Reefer boomed^ ’‘Not a bit,
girl! Look at our cave here — you
can see there’s no danger at jdl!”
And his laugh filled the cave, drovoi-
ing out the distant whines and drones.

Cliff Hawk said uneasily, “In order
to duplicate the structure of a rogue
star we had to duplicate some of the
environment features. Not really. Not
in degree. But we needed great pres-
sure and temperature, and — Well,
as you can see, we had a little acci-
dent.”

“Little enough,” flashed Milly Zal-
divar. “It nearly killed you — and
me, for that matter!”

“That’s why I want you to go
back to Wisdom Creek, Molly.
Right away, before — ”

“Now, stop that!” shouted Molly
Zaldivar. “I won’t go! I was afraid
what you were doing was dangerous;
that’s why I sent for And — Well,
never mind! But now that 1 know il;
I won’t slop imtil I make you give
it up!”

“Impossible. I’ll take you back.”

“You won’t!”

“Great Almalik, girl!” shouted
Cliff Hawk, his face showing anima-
tion again for the first time. “What’s
got into you? Don’t you understand, I
don’t want you here! Why won’t you
go?”

“Because I love you, you idiot!”
cried the girl, and broke into tears.

There was silence then, even the
Reefer saying nothing, though his
eyes winked comically under the
bushy yellow brows and his bearded
face grinned hugely at the spectacle.

They stood staring at each other,
Molly Zaldivar and the man she
loved. The silence protracted itself.

And then Molly shivered. “Some-
thing’s — wrong.” she whispered.
“I’m scared. Cliff.”

Cliff Hawk’s stem face lifted. He
stood listening, to something that he
could not quite hear.

In the opening of the cavemouth
the sleeth moved restlessly, the shim-
mer of its transflection field rippling
light across its night-black hide. The
Reefer stared at it, then away.

“Girl,” he rumbled, “you’re right
about that. The sleeth’s spooked. You
know what I think? I think we’ve got
a visitor.”

Deep under the cave lay a tunnel,
driven into the mountain by
ancient prospectors a millenium ear-
lier, beaded with galleries thrusting
out from the main shaft to seek for
gold or silver ores that were never
found. For ten centuries they had
lain empty, until Cliff Hawk and the
Reefer came to fill them with their
machines and instruments, to use
them to hatch a new life that would
serve as their contact with the rogue
stars.

In one of those galleries, in a vault
that the men had enlarged and bound
about with steel and transflection en-
ergies, there was a region of great
pressure and heat. All the energies of
the screaming power tubes were fun-
neled to keep that hot, dense plasma
alive. It was an incubator, designed
to produce a new life.

And it had succeeded.

Down there in the hot, crushing
dark. Something stirred.

Its first knowledge was of pain. It
had been bom in a place where noth-
ing like it had ever been before, a
place that was innately hostile to all
things like itself.

It stirred and reached out with an
intangible probe of energy. The probe
touched the energy-bound steel that
kept its plasma environment intact,
and recoiled.

I am caught, it told itself. I do not
wish to be caught.

And then it fell to pondering the
qu^tion of what is meant by “I.”
This occupied it for many thousands
of microseconds — a long time in
its life, which had just begun, but
only a moment by the human stan-
dards of the, as yet unknown to it,
world outside its pen. Overhead Cliff
Hawk was studying his instruments
ranging into galaxies millions of light-
years away. The Reefer was roughly,
effectively checking the tools and
power tu^s in the higher cave above,
while his sleeth slipped Gently and
sightlessly arotmd the crest of the hill.
And down its slope Molly Zaldivar
had just abandoned her old blue
electrocar and was stealing toward the
entrance.

At that point the new Something
in the plasma field concluded its first
serious deliberations with a conclu-
sion worthy of Descartes; I do not
know what I am, but I know that I
am something capable of finding out
what 1 am.

And it proceeded experimentally to
seek a further soltition. Gathering its
energies, it thrust again at the metal
and energies that bound it; thrust

ROGUE STAR

hard, with neither thought of damage
to itself (h had not yet learned the
habit of self-preservation) nor in-
terest in the consequences of its en-
vironment.

It thrust — and penetrated.

The dense, hot plasma burst free
into the cave, shaking the en-
tire hill, destroying its own gallery,
melting down the steel bottle that had
held it. As it broke free it died; the
energies from the power tube that
had replenished it were automatically
cut off — which kept the hill, and
half the countryside around, from de-
struction. Overhead the tremor it
caused shorted connections, started a
fire, caused secondary explosions in
a dozen places. They picked up
Molly Zaldivar and threw her into a
heap, rocketed a shard of metal across
Cliff Hawk’s brow and threw the
Reefer to hi$ knees, where he shout-
ed in anger and pain and called to
his sleeth.

The thing that had been bom in
the i^asma did not die. It registered
this fact in its billion billion coded
electrons without surprise. It had not
been sure that it was alive, and had
not feared to die. It hung in the cor-
ridor, while acrid chemicail smoke
and bright radiant heat whirled
around it, untouched by them, hang-
ing now in its own transflcction
forces, independent of its environ-
ment.

And free.

Now its probes could reach far-
ther. They crept out onto the face
of the mountain and lightly touchy
the unconscious mind of Molly Zal-
divar, who moaned in fear and tried

to open her eyes. They touched and
penetrated the stark, bare thoughts
of the sleeth. They studied Oiff
Hawk and the Reefer, dismissed the
inanimate rock and metal of the
mountain and its caves, reached out
toward the human minds of Wisdom
Creek and found them not worth in-
spection, scanned the myriad men,
women, children, bees, turtles, dol-
phins, dogs, apes, elephants of Earth
and filed them for future examina-
tion, reached out to the Moon and
the planets, shaped themselves and
stretched to touch the Sun itself.

All in the first few seconds of
freedom.

Then they recoiled, and the thing
that had been bom so few moments
before contracted in upon itself to
think again. For some of the things
it had touched had caused it cer-
tain sensations. It did not recognize
what those sensations were, but it
felt they were important. Some of
them — those caused by the entity
it had not learned to identify as
Molly Zaldivar — were pleasant.
Others — those caused by that huger,
more distant entity it could not yet
recognize as the Sun — brought
about sensations which it could not
yet identify as fear. It needed time
to study the meaning of all these
things.

It contracted into itself and
thought, for many micro-seconds.

Presently a probe stretched out
from it once more. There were cer-
tain other elements in its environ-
ment which it had passed over in its
first examination, about which it
wanted more information.

It touched the “mind” of the

sleeth again, but lingered for a mo-
ment, studying it. In this simple con-
struct of cells and patterns it recog-
nized something that might serve it.
Yet there were even simpler patterns
nearby. The thing reached out and
looked at Molly’s abandoned elec-
trocar, at the great tracked handling
machine that Cliff Hawk and the
Reefer used for moving earth and
heavy machines, at the instruments
and machines of the cave themselves.

Hesitantly the probes returned to
the thing down in the blazing gallery
below.

It needed more time for thought.
It wished to consider what it was
that stirred inside it in regard to these
things. It had not yet learned to call
those stirrings “hxmger.”

Cliff Hawk lifted his head from
the hooded viewtubes of his
instruments and shouted: ‘‘Reefer!
You’re right! There’s something near
us that wasn’t here before!”

The Reefer nodded his great head
slowly. ‘‘Thought so.” His little dark
eyes were hooded in thought. “Ques-
tion is, what?”

MoUy Zaldivar struggled to her
feet and caught at Cliff Hawk’s arm.
“Please stop, dearest! Don’t go any
farther. Let’s call for help before it’s
too late.”

Impatiently he shook her arm off,
but she clung. “Cliff, please. I’m
afraid. I felt something nearby before
and, oh!, it frightened me. Let me
call Andy Quam and — ”

He jerked his head around to glare
at her. “Quamodian? Is he on Earth?”
“I — I think so, Cliff. I sent for
him, because I was so worried.”

Cliff Hawk laughed sharply. “Lit-
tle Andy Quam? You thought he
could help in this?** He shook his
head, dismissing little Andy Quam,
and turned to the Reefer. “Could we
have hatched something? Were you
inside the lower galleries?”

The Reefer shook his shaggy head.
“Just passed by the mouth. The
power tubes were running free, no
load, and I had to adjust them. But
there was something burning down
there.”

“Idiot!” snapped Cliff Hawk, and
bent to turn a switch. A bank of
viewers lighted up before him on the
wall, displaying the entrance to the
lower cave, a jumble of machinery,
a blank rock face where a gallery
ended — and nothing. Five of the
viewers showed only the shifting
whiteness of their scanning traces; no
picture came through.

(Down in that lower cavern, hov-
ering in the smoky fire where the
burned-out cameras stared eyelessly
at it, the thing that had come from
the plasma tank completed its consid-
eration and stretched out another
probe. It was reaching for the Sun.
It had concluded that the danger in
the Sun needed action. The thing in
the lower cavern massed perhaps an
ounce and a half of stripped elec-
trons and plasma. The mass of the
Sun was some 2x 1033 grams, a third
of a million times as much as the
planet Earth. The thing did not re-
gard those odds as important.)

Molly Zaldivar shivered and moved
away. Her bruises were beginning to
trouble her now, and Cliff Hawk
seemed to have forgotten she was
alive; he and that terrible Reefer,

with his face burned black and seam-
ed with scars» were shouting at each
€ther» pointing at the banks of in-
strum^ts^ acting in general like lu-
natics. Molly 2^divar did not attempt
to follow what they were talking
about> except that something big had
happened. But it could not be any-
thing that was good she was certain.

Her eyes widened. “Cliff,” she
cried. “Listenl”

(The thing had acquired a great
deal more skill in handling its func-
tions in the past few thousand micro-
seconds. While one probe was reach-
ing out, invisibly and intangibly, to
touch t^ Sun, it found itself able to
mount other probes. One extended it-
self to touch those simplest of pat-
terned creatures that it had discover-
ed on the upper part of the moun-
tain.)

“)^^t’s the matter, Molly?” Cliff
was irritated, she knew; but could
not stop.

“Listen — outsidel That’s my car,
starting upl”

And now all three of them could
hear it, the distant tiny whine of the
electrocar. They leaped foe the cave-
mouth, all three of them, while the
sleeth bobbed silently out of their
way, and stared. Before their eyes
the little car started to move up the
mountain toward them.

There was no one at the wheeL

The sleeth darted abruptly toward
it, recoiled and returned to the cave-
mouth like an arrow hurled at them.
“Easy, girl!” shouted the Reefer, and
turned to cry to Cliff Hawk: “The
animal’s cau^t a whUf of something.
Careful! I can’t control it when it’s
like this. ...”

But that danger dwindled into
nothingness even befc»re Molly Ztd-
divar quite realized what it wa& For
something huger happened and caug)M
them all unaware.

Outside the reddening sunset hgihl
brightened, flashed into an exfdosion
of white-hot brilliance. Something
shook them, threw them against each
other and the walls. The hght
dwindled and returned, dwindled
again and returned again, and en this
third time it struck with such violence
that, for the second time that day,
MoHy Zaldivar found herself hurled
into unconsciousness. As she fell into
blackness she heard the Reefer shout-
ing: “The star! Great Almahk, Hawk,
we’re being hit by the star!”

Quamodian shivered. Leaning past
the boys clustered at the win-
dow of his flyer, he shaded his eyes
to study that thin column of dark
smoke which rose straight above the
^lallow notch in the Idue-hazed Mils.
The three boys moved closer to bins,
Mreathless and pale.

‘Treacher, what did it bit?” the
dark boy whispered suddenly. “Did
it hurt anybody?”

“I don’t know,” said Andreas
Quamodian. He groaned and s}an>-
med his fist against the unbreakable
^ass. “But I’ve got to find out!”

“The sun did it,” said Rufc
breathlessly. “I saw it. It bit the
Reefer’s place.”

Absently, staring at the thin be^
con of unoke, Andy (Juam said:
“Who’s the Reefer?”

“A man from the Reefs of Space.

RPGUE STAR

He lives up on Wolf Gap ridge — >
right where you see that smoke. Him
and his sleeth.’*

Quam glanced blankly at the boy.
“A sleeth?”

“It’s a thing from space. It hunts.
The Reefer trapped it whep it was a
cub. He raised it for a pet My uncle
says he rides it now, but 1 don’t
know^ Cliff Hawk doesn’t, I know
that. Nobody would dare touch it but
the Reefer.”

“They were bred to hunt pyro-
pods,” said the smallest of the boys,
suddenly. *The sleeth can catch a py^
ropod and claw it to scrap meti.”

Quam said harshly: “1 don’t care
about the sleeth. Or die Reefer. What
does Cliff Hawk have to do with
all this?”

Rufe shrugged. “The Reefer
brought him here from the Ree&
when he was just a kid like me,
then sent him off to the stars to team
to be a transflection engineer. That’s
what my dad says.”

‘What else does your dad say
about Hawk?”

“Says Hawk’s building something
for the Reefer. Contraband. Don’t
know what kind, but they smug^e
in machines that humans aren’t sup-
posed to have without permission
from the Star.”

The smallest boy whined, “I want
to go back down, preacher. I want
to go to Starschool.”

“Jayl You know we all said we
weren’t going to — ”

“Shut up, Rufel I want to ask my
Starschool teacher about the thing
that hit the ridge. I’m scared, and
Mark knows nearly everything. 1 want
to see him!”

The red-headed boy looked at
Andy Quam and shrugged. “Mark’s
a robot,” he said. “But Jay’s maybe
right. Mark might know something.”
Without thought Andy Quam’s
fingers reached out to the controls,
but the flyer listening, had anticipated
his thought Already they were drop-
ping to the ground.

“I’ll take you there. Jay,” said
Andy Quam eagerly. “Provided you
let me come along. I want to know
too!”

They hurried up the graveled walk,
under the multiple suns of Almalik
imaged in the space-black dome of
the church. The boy Jay guided Qua-
modian through hushed passages to
Mark’s schoolroom.

It was nearly empty, only a score
or so brightly dressed children clus-
tered at the front and a smaller, shab-
bier group lounging skeptically at the
back. The robot paused to greet them.

“Come in, studentsl We are telling
the wonderful story of the Visitants
and the precious gifts they brou^t
to the old human savages, centuries
ago. Please take your seats.”

The three boys slipped quietly into
empty seats along a back bench, with
the others who wore the worn and
faded fiber clothing of the free peo-
ple who had never accepted the Star.
Quamodian walked past them, down
the aisle to where the brighter-garbed
children of civilization sat on the
front benches. He stopped and plant-
ed himself in front of the robot.

“Robot-inspector, I’m sorry to in-
terrupt — ”

The robot hung in the air before
him, its tall black shining case re-

fleeting the lights of the room and of
its own oval of flame-bright plasma.
The plasma flickered^ darted half a
yard toward him, flicked a dark,
whiplike effector toward his face.

“Sir, you cannot interrupt,” the
robot intoned, its voice ringing like
tossed pebbles against the low, blue
dome.

“I can. Robot-inspector. I am your
superior in the Companions of the
Star. I am Monitor Andreas Quamo-
dian.”

“Even so, sir,” pealed the robot,
“you cannot control me today. Our
new compact allows no official duties
to interfere with voluntary religious
activities on Starday. Teaching this
class. Monitor Quamodian, is my vol-
untary religious activity.”

Andy Quam stood Us ground, dis-
daining the effector that tried to
wave him away. “Robot, an emer-
gency exists.” He heard the ripple of
excitement from the children and
lowered his voice. “A very grave
emergency, I’m afraid. Three plasma
bolts from the sun have just struck
near here. Human beings may have
been injured, even killed.”

Gendy but firmly, the dark tip of
the effector coiled around his arm,
propelled him irresistibly toward the
benches. “You must wait, sir,“ sang
the robot as the staring children
tittered. “Be seated. Be still. Be at-
tentive, all of you, as I resume the
wonderful story of the Visitants and
their fusorian gifts to men.”

Andy Quam muttered under his
breath, but clearly it was no use. He
stalked back down the aisle to the
back benches, where Rufe gave him
an improving grin. “You’re okay.

preacher! We don’t like robots*
either.”

•^Hush, boy,” said Andy Quam aa
severely as the robot. He sat gjower-
ing bleakly at the dark case of the
robot, where its mark number was
blazoned just under the bri^t-star-
red orbital pattern of Almalik. Per-
haps the robot was hard to manage
today, but tomorrow would be dif-
ferent

“The fusorians,” sang the robot
melodiously, retracting its effector
and floating higher toward the blue
dome, “are older than the stars, and
all of them are very wonderful. They
are microscopic creatures that live by
fusing hydrogen atoms, and they
evolved in space — so long ago that
they divided into many millions of
different species. The Reefs of Space
are built of atoms which some fu-
sorians create. The Visitants are a
special race of fusorians which live
like symbiotes, inside the bodies of
creatures like men.”

“Bugs!” hissed the red-headed boy
to Quamodian. “My dad says they’re
nothing but parasites!”

“In the wonderful partnership of
man and fusorian,” the robot tritted,
“each benefits, neither is harmed.
For the \^itants are wonderfully
wise and just. They have evolved
transcience intellectic patterns which
knit their colonies together and link
them all with the sentient stars. And
so we are all united, all joined into
the great multiple Citizen named
Cygnus, whose spokesman star is
Almalik.”

‘Slaved, you mean,” whispered
the red-headed boy.

“That is,” sang the robot, its oval *

ROGUE STAR

of plasma pulsing rhapsodically» “so
are we joined if we accept the gift of
the Visitants. On the great day when
you join the Star they will jump in a
fat gdden spark to your skin. Their
colonies will penetrate every cell of
your body. They win destroy all ma-
rauders and all wild cells, and keep
you young forever. They bring you
utter happiness, and utter peace. This
is the gift of the Visitants.”

“Hogwash,” the redhead muttered.
“Preacher, why don’t you make him
shut up?”

“And here with us on this Star-
day,” cried the singing voice of the
robot, “we are fortunate, children,
blessed by the Visitants. For we have
with us a Monitor of the Companions
of the Star!” Lightninglike, a pale ef-
fector stabbed forth and burst in a
shower of light over Andy Quam’s
head, as the children turned and
stared. “For great Almalik can only
help us and guide us, he cannot
fight for his own right cause. So we
Companions fight for him, Monitor
Andreas Quamodian here as well as,
more humbly, my poor robot self.”

Quam swallowed angrily, tom be-
tween the desire to stalk out of the
room and the yearning to leap to his
feet and denounce this willful robot
who spoke of duty but would not help
him in the emergency that had blast-
ed the mountains.

“Of course,” the robot added deli-
cately, “Monitor Quamodian and my-
self do not view aH questions in the
same light. Sometimes we differ.
Sometimes, perhaps, one of us is
wrong. But that too is just and prop-
er, for the peace of the Star keeps us
free, while joining us in fellowsMp.

It bobbed soundlessly for a mo?
ment, as though entranced with its
own words, while its pale oval of
plasma bhikied briefly blue. “Now
we are finished,” it said at last “Chil-
dren, you may leave. Monitor Qua-
modian, I thank you for being with
us today.”

And Andy Quam pushed furiously
down the aisle, through the
knots of chattering children, to con-
front the robot. “Robot-inspector,”
he cried, “how do you fight for Al-
malik when you won’t even help me
in this important matter?”

“Patience, Monitor Quamodian,”
purred the robot. “There are evil
men and evil stars who reject the
universal good of ah. I join you glad-
ly in fighting them, but under our
compact Starday is — ”

“Is just another day!” Quamodian
shouted roughly. “Rogue men are
plotting with Rogue stars. There is
great danger here, and it cannot wait
on your convenience!”

The robot bobbed silently in its
transflection field, as though it were
considering what to do. Half-formed
effectors budded around its case and
were withdrawn; its plasma oval
turned opalescent as pale colors
chased themselves through it. It said
at last, ‘The situation is grave. Mon-
itor Quamodian.”

“You don’t begin to know how
grave,” Andy Quam sard bitterly.
“Didn’t you hear me? Three bolts of
plasma from the Sun! That would
have been impossible for any star,
even a non-intellectic one like the
Sun, without grave provocation. So
there must have been provocation —

something very dangerous* very seri-
ous, going on out in the bills!’*

*‘We have recorded that phenome-
non,” the robot agreed melodiously.
”It is more serious than you think,
perhaps. Monitor Quamodian.

Quam brought up short, diverted.
“More serious than 1 think?
What — ?” .

“But nevertheless,” the robot went
on, “the compact is clear. You may
not compel me today. And 1 advise
— we advise, most urgently — that
you undertake no action without our
aid. You see. Monitor Quamodian,
we have recorded the presence of ex-
treme hazards about which you know
nothing.”

Quamodian stuttered, “I d-d- I
demand that information! Right
now!”

“Under the compact — ”

“Blast the compact!”

“Under the compact,” the robot re-
peated serenely, “you may make no
demands. I wiU do for you only what
I wish to do freely, as part of my
voluntary religious observance of
Starday.” It hesitated for only a sec-
ond, while the shimmering colors on
its plasma oval spun madly, then
burst into a bright, even golden fire.
“Voluntarily,” it sang, “I elect to aid
you now. Will you mount on my
back Monitor Quamodian I will
convey you at once to the site of the
sun-bolts. For in truth there is dan-
ger; a rogue star has been born there,
and it lives and grows!”

The thing had grown now, grown
even while its effectors were

reaching out to the sun and the sun’s
triple-stroked reply was coming back.
It had passed Descartes’s Je pense,
et puis je suis, and that milestone
surmounted had put aside its exam-
ination of itself for examination of
its world. Dark. Alone. Particles. It
discovered that some of the particles
were organized into macrostructures;
it did not label these “matter,” but
it grasped at once that they operated
as vector units, a myriad whirling
charged bits contriving a mean mo-
tion exerting a mean force. Warmth.
Radiation. Free of the heat of its
exploded womb, it sought other en-
ergy sources, tapped them, used them,
owned them.

I move, it “thought” — a true
thought, joining together its sense of
self and an operator; and it swam
slowly along its deep tunnel, reaching
for new sensation and new strength.
Pull. Gravity. Lift. It slid throu^
material obstacles or brushed them
aside. Behind it lay a trail of erupted
doors and demolished tiers of sup-
plies. Search. Search. It gave a name
to what it was doing and a sense of
a goal. Search for w^t?

It became aware of a kind of radi-
ation that was itself structured, that
possessed patterns that were neither
random or meaningless. I?

The thing paused, palping the faint
currents of sensation that emanated
from distant sources. Affirmative,
Not I but another

It had recognized that there were
other creatures in its world, other
competitors for energy or matter or
space ... or companions.

In the cavern above, MoUy Zaldi-
var roused briefly from the stunned

ROGUE STAR

shock that held her and moaned in
terror. Something was studying her.
Something that caused fear. Some-
thing utterly strange, that had never
been in this world brfore.

VIII

Molly Zaldivar stirred and returned
to consciousness. She lay across
the crumpled legs of a laboratory
stool, and one of them was stabbing
her with its shattered end. The cave
workshop was hissing, moaning,
crackling with electrical shorts and
hot, cooling metal. The pale violet
corona that once had enshrouded a
globe of gold now threw itself like a
tattered net from point to point, dy-
ing and returning, hissing and crack-
ling. There was smoke from some-
where outside the cave, and a heavier,
choking smoke from within.

She rubbed impatiently at her fore-
head, drew her hand away and saw,
without surprise or fear, that it was
bloody. But she was alive. She tried
three times before she could speak:
“Cliff. Cliff, where are you?”
Hawk’s voice answered at once, but
weakly, more a whisper than his nor-
mal gruff tone. “I — I don’t know
exactly, Molly. Are you all right?”
She glanced down at herself —
clothes a horror, skin bruised and
cut, dirty and damp. But more or
less functional, she decided. “I think
so. How about you?”

She sat up, peering around. At first
she could not see him. “Cliff! Are
you hurt?”

Rubble stirred a few yards away,
and Cliff Hawk’s whisper said: “I
don’t know. Something fell on me.”

“Oh, Cliff I” MoBy struggled to her^
feet, limped, half crav^ed across the
piles of debris that w^e all that
was left of Hawk’s orderly laboratory.
“Can you move? Are you in pain?”

A trash-heap stirred again, and
Molly saw that what she had taken
for another heap of litter was the
upper part of Hawk’s body, powdered
with grime and ash, but apparently in-
tact He seemed to be jackknifed over
something, some large object diat was
resting on what would have been his
lap, facing away from her. He twist-
ed and looked at her. It took all his
strength, and his face was a mask of
effort and pain. “My — legs are
caught” he gritted.

“Wait No, sit still — let me!”
And forgetting her own aches she
flew to free him; but it was impossi-
ble. A beam had fallen across his
legs, knocking him down; some other
blow had thrust him sidewise. His
upper body and arms were filthy and
battered, but they were free and he
could move. But his legs were under
half a ton of mass.

He gave up the effort and slumped
forward again, across the weight that
pinned him down. After a moment
he said, “Where’s the Reefer? He
can help — ”

Molly looked around helplessly.
“I don’t know.”

“Call him!”

But though she shouted, there was
no answer. She stood up, stretching
out an arm to the tunnel wall to
steady herself. The smoke was getting
very thick; something bad was hap-
pening in the interior of the work-
shop, and she could feel a warning
of heat

She shouted for the Reefer again;
still no answer. There was no help
for it; if Cliff Hawk was going to get
out of the trap that bound him, she
was the one who would have to do
it. She bent dizzily to tug again at
the beam. Hawk did not speak; his
eyes were closed, he seemed to be
unconscious. The beam was immo-
bile.

Molly knelt in the litter, careless
of the jagged edges that were shred-
ding her knees, and methodically be-
gan to move what could be moved:
the plastic housing from one of
Hawk’s instrument panels, a tangle
of light metal tubing, a drift of shat«
tered glassware. The smoke made her
cough and blink, but she did not look
up. . . .

Not until she became aware of the
sound that had been growing in her
ears for seconds, now was loud, close,
compelling. It was a singing rustle
like a breeze through dry brush.

The sleeth.

She turned and froze. The crea-
ture hung in the air not a yard from
her back, its broad, blind eyes fas-
tened on her, its supple muscles rip-
pling down the black, sleek skin.

For a moment she thought it was
help.

But Cliff Hawk did not stir.
There was no sign of the Reefer. She
was alone with a helpless man and
a creature from space whose whole
anatomy was meant for killing.

Under the mountain the flowing
essence of power that was the in-
fant rogue star paused to consider
the meaning of the sharp-edged triple
slap the sun had administered to its

curiosity, li was a rebuke, clearly
enough. Even at ninety-odd million
miles, Sol could have launched a far
more devastating blow. The tiny
rogue knew that as surely as it knew
its own strength and knew therefore,
in its simple logic, that the intent of
the blow was not destruction but a
warning. Star too big. It corrected
itself: / too small. Get bigger.

It had not been hurt in any way by
the triple blast of coiled white fl^e.
It did not fear a harder blow; indeed,
it had not evolved a concept of
“fear.” But there were smaller, more
controllable assemblies of particles
closer at hand, and the rogue elected
to investigate them.

Molly’s little car it scanned, solved,
manipidated and discarded. (The lit-
tle vehicle started up at the rogue’s
remote command. Obediently moved
forward and, when the rogue with-
drew its attention, mindlessly ground
ahead until one wheel dropped over
the lip of the road and it slid, rolled
and finally bounced to destruction
down the mountain.)

More complex creations existed,
the rogue foimd. It did not “see”;
it did not distinguish ^dsible light
from any other form of radiation,
but it recognized differences in fre-
quency and kind. The differences
were to it something like colors are
to carbon-based life: it recognized
a “green” glow which flickered vio-
lently, as though in fear or pain; a
blue-violet aura which waned as the
rogue observed it; emanations of all
rainbow colors, and far into the in-
fra- and ultra-frequencies, which were
the sleeth, a colony of burrowing
moles, an ant’s nest, even small

ROGUE STAR

faintly radiant points, like dust in a
searchlight beam, that were the mi-
croorganisms in the air, the soil, the
bodies of the larger life-forms nearby.

Something about the “green” light
interested the jogue; perhaps it was
the violence of its aura. It observed
closely and discovered that there was
an organized mass of particulate mat-
ter attached to it; the matter seemed
to be acting upon that other mass of
matter which appeared to be asso-
ciated with the glow and the bodies
of matter that were its sources.
Please, Cliff, Molly was begging, help
me get you out; but the rogue was
a long way from having formed the
concept of communication, much less
acquiring a grasp of any language.

A brighter glow of vivid gold was
moving toward them; the rogue
reached out to encompass it and
found it a new phenomenon, some-
thing between the car and the hu-
mans, far more subtle and complex
in its organization than the clumsy
mechanical toy it had played with for
a moment, then discard^; yet sim-
ple enough to be operated. The rogue
studied the sleeth-for a fraction of
a second, then reached out an invisi-
ble effector. It played with the
sleeth, sending it through the air.

(Outside the cavemouth, the Reef-
er picked himself up, staggered to his
feet and stared wildly about. There
was blood on his grimy yellow beard,
and his huge features had new scars.
He croaked a question at the world,
but there was no one to answer, no
one in sight, nothing but gray smoke
from inside the cave and crackling
flame and white smoke from where
something had set the cavemouth

beams afire. He turned slowly, utir
steady on his feet. The sun was a
frightening color, roiled red and
angry. The sky was clouded and omi-
nous. He shouted for his sleeth,
but there was no answer.)

The infant rogue was aware of
the dull, slate-colored hue that was
the Reefer. It had even recognized a
connection between it and its new
toy, the sleeth.

It would be interesting, the young
rogue thought, to play with one of
these more complex mechanisms too.

But for the moment it had not yet
tired of the sleeth, arrowing it through
the smoky sky, lashing out with its
death-dealing claws and transfleetion
fields at birds, rocks, tufts of grass.

The organization of matter fascin-
ated the rogue. It decided to explore
the possibilities of changing that or-
ganization, of interfering. It decided
to be a god.

It thought for a moment of com-
mandeering the Reefer for practice,
as it had commandeered and operated
first the electrocar, then the sleeth.
It considered destroying one of the
glowing living things. Any one. De-
stroying it so that it might be dis-
sected and studied.

But it did not.

Already, only minutes after its
first birth from its womb of plasma,
the rogue had begun to develop
habit patterns and “character.” Its
development was not only rapid but
exponential. Its first actions had been
entirely random, as pure a free will
as a pinball machine. But it learned.
The new and generally unpleasant en-
vironment in which it found itself,
it had discovered, responded pleasing-

ly to certain kinds of manipulation. It
was easy to destroy its features, one
by one. The rogue could demolish
a rock, kill a living thing, uproot a
mountain, lash out at a sun. But once
destroyed, it had learned, they were
gone.

A more interesting, that is to say
a more educational, way of manipu-
lating them was to operate short of
destruction. To interfere, but not to
kill.

Not at first.

There was no question of con-
science in this, of course, nor of
mercy. The rogue was as yet totally
without a superego. But it had learn-
ed for the sweet taste of pleasure.

These organized masses of matter
could be sources of pleasure.

Molly dared move slightly, cran-
ing her neck to see past the

sleeth.

“Reefer?” she whispered. “Are
you there? Can you help me?”

But there was no human figure
behind the great singing shadow of
the sleeth. It hung there with its huge
eyes fastened on her and then, with-
out warning, slipped forward, darted
to the wall, and hung over Cliff
Hawk’s unconscious body.

Molly screamed, “Don’t hurt him!”
But in fact the sleeth was not. It
bobbed silently over him for a mo-
ment, then the pale radiance of its
transflection field flickered.

Cliff Hawk’s body quivered, then
sat slowly up. “Cliff!” cried Molly,
“you’re all right!” But he was not
conscious. His head lolled on a
shoulder, his eyes were closed.

She stared wide-eyed at the sleeth.

ROGUE STAR

It was lifting Cliff, but why? What
was it going to do?

She did not have to wait for an
answer. The transflection fields flick-
ered again, and the great beam that
had pinned him came up off his lap.
It lifted at one end, like the boom
of a crane, raised hsdf to the height
of his'hea^ rotated majestically, and
dropped into a of rubble.

Gently Hawk’s torso was allowed
to sink back, until he was lying out-
stretched and unencumbered. He had
not regained consdouaness.

‘Thank you,” wluspei^ Molly to
the sleeth — knowing it could not
understand; or not caring whether
it could oi' not. Then she flew to
Hawk.

He was badly hurt, but he was
alive. There was not much blood. His
legs, thoudif were badly injured;
though they lay straight enough,
when she moved one he groaned
sharply in his sleep, and his face
twisted in pain.

He needed medical attention. "Oh,
Cliff!” she sobbed. "If only you
hadn’t — ”

From the cavemooth the voice of
the Reefer muttered, "Leave him be.
You’re as bad hurt as he is.”

"Oh, Reeferr cried the girl. "Help
me! Cliffs been badly hurt, and we’ve
got to get him to Wisdom Creek.”
Then what he had said penetrated
to her, and she realized, with surprise,
that in fact she was on the verge of
unconsciousness heiseif. The smoky
air made her lightheaded; she was
coughing without knowing she was
coughing; her bruised, racked body
was beginning to hurt in earnest.

"How?” growled the Reefor.

"1 don’t knowf’ She swayed diz-
zily, and wafled, "At kast let’s get
him out in the open. He’ll suffocate
in here.”

The Reefer moved cautiously for-
ward. Even in her misery, Mdly
could see that he had been hurt, too.
His little eyes were sunk in pain, his
yellow beard and mustache dotted
with blood. He stood over Cliff
Hawk, studying him without touching
him.

"Can’t,” he said.

"You’ve got to!”

"Can’t move him. If the sleeth was
acting right — But he’s not SpodL-
ed fair. Not that 1 blame him,” the
Reefer rumbled. "We’ve chewed up
pyropods out in the Reefs, but we
never tangled with a star before.”

"Star? What star?”

"The Sun, gixL That triple sun-
bolt. I think we’ve got ourselves in
trouble.”

The sleeth, which had been hang-
ing humming nearby, surged sudden-
ly toward them. The Reefer flinched
away, and the sleeth passed him by
and darted out into the open air
again. "You see, girl? Won’t mind
me a bit. Don’t know what’s got into
him.”

"Then you and I must lift him
out!” '

The Reefer spat into the rubble.
"You? Couldn’t lift yourself, I’d say;
you’re wore out And I can’t manage
him by myself. KiU him if I tried.”

Then what can we do? Pkase,
Reefer?”

The Reefer looked past her, into
the denser smoke that was rolling to-
ward them down the tunnel. "Only
one thing I know,” he growled.

“Shoot him for you, if you like. Bet-
ter than letting him bum.”

The rogue tired of the sleeth,
thought for a moment of de-
stroying it, then merely abandoiied it
to its own devices. It amused itsdf
briefly by examining the state of those
non-radiant assemblages of matter
which had been so brutally tossed
about by the sunbohs. It did not rec-
ognize them as instnniieiitsi, ma-
chines, bits of buman ioveotiveness;
but it did see that they had been
made f unctionless by the damage they
had suffered, and that the chemic^
reactions now taking place in and
among them were damaging them
still farther.

It understood, after a meditation
of some nanoseconds, that the course

of the fire was carrying it toward
those radiant masses which it had not
yet learned to think of as living. It
did, however, realize that the same
sort of damage that had blasted the
machines would harm them as well;
and that one ci the radiances was
visiUy fading in any case.

It wonld be interesting, thought
the mbmt n>goe^ to do something
new. It had ahea^ removed the ra-
diationless lamp of matter from the
radiant mass that was Cfiff Hawk,
using the sleeth as its proxy; that had
been disappointing nothing had hap-
pened.

But it wondered what if it were
to soak vtp some of the radiation?

It was a notion that attracted the
sleeth. It did not know why. It had
not yet learned to recognize hunger.

TO BE CONTINUED

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a year of Galaxy once more — filled with stories tike —

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by Damon Knight

HOW WE BANNED THE BOMBS

by Mack Reynolds

THE BEAST THAT SHOUTB5 "LOVE"

bf Hodon Elifson

And many more. Don't miss the June Galaxy, on sale now!

ROGUE STAR

IF • Novelette

GUERRILLA
TREES ^ . « .ou»

Illustrated by JEFF JONES

Aleni We were sent here to save
B44(3), and that's what we'll do —
by burning the whole world to ash!

Not with a general, thought Har-
Har-Gret Harker. Certainly not
with a general; how could I explain
that to the gang on the tape deck?

Girl war correspondent Haggie
Harker had made a career in the
newstapes by exposing corrupt in-

competence among the big jets. For
this she was loved by flame ser-
geants, tube men and battle jumpers
across the galaxy. It fitted neither
her public image nor her private
idea of self to dally with a military
boss; but in the cramped command
module from which General Borger
Traven ran the ugly little war on the

tiny planet circling the insignificant
sun, the just-arrived news*taper felt
the old chemistry begin to bubble.

Haggie Harker was too hard on
others in her newstapes to be less
than honest with herself. She knew
very well what was happening to her;
but the thought of an amorous pas-
sage in the very atmosphere of
‘Traven’s terror” was actively un-
pleasant

Outside, the yellow sun, more
nearly burnt out than Sol, had sunk
below the green horizon, and the
green dark of B44(3) came on apace.
Outside, the guerrilla trees were shak-
ing the dirt from their roots, ready
to sidle close to Terra’s enclaves to
strange and poison Traven’s troops
for another night Inside, the shadows
lengthened down the spectrum from
green to black, and in the lighted
cubicle from which Borger Traven
commanded his battle jumpers,
chemical affinities explored and af-
firmed, each other, not yet at the
tactile level.

Cold courtesy was the order of the
day. Beneath it, Haggie Harker was
aware of a mounting excitement; but
whatever else lay in store for Borg
Traven and herself, she had a job to
do first. It was not the job the general
expected; for he believed that she had
written her first tape before she ever
came out to B44(3), and that nothing
he could show her would change
her critical attitude. His politeness
was put on only to avoid a worse
drubbing. ( Who’d be a bloody soldier?
he thought. But she’s pretty . . . .)

“General,” she said, “is it still the
position of the military that the den-
droids are not people?”

“I must remind you again,” the
general said, his slow boy’s smile
lighting his un-boy’s face for a mo-
ment, “that I do not speak for the
^military.’ 1 am the head of Sol’s Ad-
visory Commission to the Govern-
ment of Yip Sing. And although I
happen to be a general officer, and
many of our personnel, committed
to the struggle to let the free Yips
choose freely what course their his-
tory will take, are soldiers, that is
an accident of history brought about
by the fact that repeated brutal acts
of aggression have been committed
against the free Yips by their ene-
mies. We are here to redress the
balance and to help this little world
into the family of free planets.

“Now,” he said, smiling again,
“within that context. I’ll try to answer
your question. Our xenologists tell mo
that Yips are people, all right. But
they are human people.”

44/^h yes,” the reporter said. “I

v>/ “I realize that’s why they
are called dendroids. Our government
has taken the position that they are
some sort of trees. But General, do
trees scream and pray for mercy
when their bark is pulled off or a
limb is pruned?”

Borg Traven coughed. “Who
knows? If trees on Sol Three were
as articulate in the ranges we can
hear as the Yips and Yaps on
B44(3), Hagan only knows what
they would say. I hope. Miss Harker,
that you don’t intend to tell these
people how we handle trees back
home. Please! I have problems of
cooperation enough.”

“But they breed! Not tree-like.”

• “Of course it’s not like earth trees.
There are a lot of other things on this
planet that aren’t like Sol Three
either.” He stood up, opened the
door to his office and whistled.
Something dark scuttled in and rear-
ed up against the general’s legs like a
dog; but it was waving antennae a
foot long. Har-Gret Harker’s skin
crawled a little.

“See?’^ the general said. “Here’s
old Arther, smart, affectionate, dog-
like. But he looks like a roach,
doesn’t he? Now, how am 1 to treat
Arther? As a roach or a dog?”

“I — I don’t know. Oh!” as great
insect eyes turned toward her and he
made as if to jump in her lap.

“Sha! don’t be afraid of him. He
really is affectionate. Wait a minute,
ru make him give off his pleasure
odor.” General Traven rooted about
in his desk for a minute and took
out an apple. “Hoo boy!”

The creature stood on the rear-
most pair of six legs, twitched its an-
tennae and, reaching the apple with
its foremost legs, descended to four
of its feet and began to munch the
fruit. A smell like bayberry candles
burning crept through the room.

“Great gronk!” the girl said. “All
right . . . you wouldn’t step on
Arther. Why are you burning and
stripping trees? Trees that can
scream?”

“They’re not exactly simple trees
either, you know. You visit some hos-
pitals and look at boys blinded by
tree poison. We’re meeting force with
equal force, that’s all. I spend a lot
of hours each day making sure that
we don’t over-react to the Yap at-
tacks.”

Almost she believed him. She had
realized now that the distinguished
gray at his temples and his patient
air reminded her of her first com-
panionate husband. They had been
companions for four years, from the
time she was twelve until she was
sixteen. He was fifty then, and the
morning after her sixteenth birthday,
he had given her a cool kiss (ah Ids
kisses were cool, she remembered)
and told her, “Haggle, you’re a young
woman now. I’m more a man for
companions than for wives. 1 hope
you’ll remeniber me kindly when you
make your permanent union.”

Now she was thirty, and Traven,
she said apprai^gly to herself,
might be her fifth companion. Was
he the one with whom she would
make a permanent union?

With a wrench, she got her mind
back to immediate business. She
could not afford to let his chance
resemblance to Rossano sway her
judgment. Always better under such
circumstances to let a machine make
the record.

THE GUERRILLA TREES

iC/^eneral» the microphoiie to my
tape can be opened.” She
tapped the black and white button^
bearing the anti-bomb sign, on the
left breast of her coverall. *This has
been background, not for attribution;
but I would be happy to have your
own exact words explaining your po-
sition.” She did not expect him to
agree; so she did not tell him that
tapping the button had opened the
microphone, whether he agreed or
not.

General Traven shook his head.
Miss Harker put a question. “Aren’t
we really just injecting our power
into one side of a civil war that is
essentially meaningless to us?”

Traven spoke vigorously. “No, in-
deed! The Yipsl are a free nation
with a history going back into anti-
quity. Yap aggression from the
southern hemisphere automatically
activated the aid provision of our
commercial treaty with Yip TaUtree,
and we responded by sending an
advisory commission. Naturally, at
this distance from earth, we can not
fight a war with our own troops.”
“Why send out a hundred thousand
of them, then, by Faster-Than-Light
capsule, at a cost of billions of cred-
its? That’s commercial aid?”

“Because they get here faster.
Freezing them and shipping in sun-
jammers means that generations of
dendroids would grow up and die
before the first of our teaching troops
got here. Come on. Miss Harker. If
we’re going to be on YipYap at all,
we’ve got to be here in sufficient
numbers and fast enough.”

She answered, “I don’t doubt that
we will win, with the technology of a

mass industrial plant leveled full-bore
against the savage, illiterate flora of a
t^d-rate planet in a tenth-rate solar
system; but if we are to make the
difference on B44(3), General,
doesn’t that make it our war, for
all that counts? Ours will be the
victory ... but that means to me
that what 6nngs victory, the incin-
erated trees, the ashen villages, the
bloody bark trophies our allies are
taking out there in the jungle, those
are all ours too. /ndde/im//y,l thought
<dl the natives resented ‘YipYap’ as a
name for their world.”

“Please,” he said. “That ‘YipYap’
just slipped out. We don’t call it that,
except in the kind of jest 1 tried
to make just then. You’re very literal,
I see. No, we call it what Groendyk
called it when he set his scout down
here. To those of us who are on
it, B44(3) is La Selva — The Jun-
gle.

“Excuse me. Miss Harker. Arthur
has finished his apple and is anxious
for me to leave so he can cmy out
his nightly marauding against the
paste and paper supply. 1 could use
a drink myself, and a little dinner.

“The head of an advisory com-
mission to Yip Sing is the loneliest
man on the planet. Would you let
me take you to your hotel and buy
you dinner first?”

They fell into step down the dark-
ened hall. Arther’s bayberry
scent following them. As they neared
the front end of a minor maze of
corridors, the night attendant slither-
ed toward them. It was a dendroid of

moderate age, about as tall as a kum-
quat tree, its bole already thickening
to the diameter of a thirty-ycar-old
ash, with the mantle atop its mush-
rooming **head” obsequiously rippling.
In near falsetto tones, which sounded
to Har-Gret Barker like a bad joke,
the creature announced, “SirsI
MadamsI Fellers! Me door. Me door.
Thissy, thatsy, outsy door! Me door,
me door, all.”

“How do you know that’s a Yip
and not a Yap?” she asked the gen-
eral in a low voice.

“Oh, easy,” he said. “Come over
here in the light, and I’ll show you.”
They stopped near a dull globe
which hardly dispelled the gloom, and
he summoned the plant-animal.
“Hey, Yip! Come on over here.
Ripple your mantle for the lady.
Now, look, Har-Gret, you can see
the base of the opening in the mantle
— the slit extends all the way round
his ‘head’ — and the base, around
where the sex nodules are, has a
faintly greenish purple cast. The Yaps
are the other way around. The moist
membrane around the sex pearls is
purplish green.”

Har-Gret Harker shrugged. In the
dim yellowish light, she could hard-
ly see any color on the moist surface,
which exuded a musky odor like that
of a long-empty perfume bottle. The
general chuckled. “You’re looking
too close. To see the color tone,
you’ve got to scan. Come on. Yip,
raise your whole flaming mantle and
spin around for us.” Silently, the
short, thick tree complied. General
Traven’s face fell. “Hagan o Hagan!

I made a mistake. Miss Harker, I’m
sorry!”

She stepped back in apprehension*
“It’s a Yap? Is it dangerous? What
can it do, at this range?” She re^h-
ed for the blaster which the issumg
sergeant had promised her she would
never have to use.

“No, no . . . oh, I . . . no, for
Selva’s sake, don’t let fly with Bad
cannon in here! It’s one of ours. Only
it isn’t a Yip. She’s a Yipper — a
lady. Blast it, I forgot to ask the
ritual question. The males, the Yips,
have a hundred of those pearly lott-
ing nodules, and the Yippers have
only ninety-seven. When you see the
whole circle, it’s easy to see whether
they’re in five even groups of twenty,
or in four of twenty and one of
seventeen. But you’re supposed to
ask. Then you don’t look. See? This
one is a Yipper.”

“I Yipper yes,” the tree said dream-
ily.

“So?” said Har-Gret Harker. She
couldn’t* believe that this casual faux
pas had embarrassed the general as
much as appeared from his sheepish
face.

“Wen, I — O Hagan, it’s nothing.
We’ll get it over right away ... the
fact is that now wc’vc looked at her,
she has the right to look at us.
Local culture pattern, you know.”
As Har-Gret stepped back farther
into the gloom, Traven said, “Ifs
just the most casual inspection, real-
ly. Really. It’s sort of like having an
oak drop an acorn in your cleavage.

I am sorry. It’s just the way the
fix fax.”

Har-Gret Harker laughed angrily
when she heard the punch fine
of earth’s most popular tv comic re-

THE GUERRILLA TREES

peated again^ as she had heard it a
hundred times in the day she had
been on B44(3), as insincere apology
for small irritations and as a put-off
for embarrassing questions. “Shall we
strip? What is this tomfoolery?” She
felt certain she had not been stirred
alone, in the general’s office. She
was seldom mistaken about such
things; but if the general turned out
to be a looker instead of a doer,
she knew she would simply turn the
reaction off.

“Please, Miss Harker,” he said,
still smiling one-sidedly, “I don’t want
to be uncomplimentary; but I should
certainly not have chosen this dark
and uncomfortable hallway as a place
in which to match orbits by some ela-
borate joke. We have to override
some of the Yipsl culture to get them
to save themselves, so we have to
give in on non-essentials. We needn’t
watch each other. Come, look: we’ll
stands side by side. Just palm open
your coverall and pull down your
... ah, your briefs . . . and I’ll do
the same . . . and that’s really all
there is to it. Then I’ll take you to
dinner and drop you at your hotel.”

Half-frowning and half-smiling,
she came forward into the partial
light and did as he suggested. Al-
though he had said that they need not
look at each other, she did not deny
herself a peripheral glance. Yipper’s
examination was more tactile than
visual, and it was very short and gen-
tle. “You he. You she. I Yipper,”
the short tree murmured, waving its
myriad twigs, and proudly tripped
the door.

Drinks and dinner were constrain-
ed until, as if by mutual consent,

.50

the war and the minor inconvenience
it had just visited on them were put
aside for a pleasant, inconsequential
chat about home. There was no other
contretemps until the cab pulled up
in front of her hotel. There was no
telling what its name had been when
it was a second-rate inn for traveling
trees; but the correspondents who had
been assigned there by (they were
all sure) a malign billeting sergeant,
had renamed it Timber Arms. The
name was boldly painted on a great
strip of peeled Yap hide.

“In Ae name of the great Melt,”
General Traven burst out, “who stuck
you in this tree-house? You’ll have to
let me billet you someplace decent,
Harker. I could drop you at the Diplo-
matic Barracks tonight, and tomorrow
you can be in the Hilton Selva.”
“No, Traven,” she refused. “Hag-
gle Harker isn’t asking any favors of
general officers, or anybody else. If
you knew how I fought to get out
here, you’d understand why I don’t
want anything that even looks as if I
complained about one single item of
the environment while Fm taping this
story. Anyway, the place is clean, and
it’s safe enough. It’s full of news-
tapers.”

44^T^hat gang! We call them the
JL pulque news pool. They sit
around all day lapping fermented
tree sap, and at night the one who
drew the short straw in the morning
comes back and every drunk in the
bunch tapes a story off him.”

“Well, that’ll make it easier for me
to beat them. Now, don’t worry about
me. Just worry about what Fm going
to write when I get back to earth.”

He laughed. “We do censor every-
thmg» you know. This is a combat
zone, even if it’s not a war.”

“It’s a war, as far as I’m concern^
ed. Remember 1 said, ‘When 1 get
back to earth.’ You can’t censor the
inside of my skull.”

“That’s the way the fix fax,” he
replied. “Listen, Har-Gret, I’d offer
to put you up — my billet is forty
rooms, a whole Hagan of a lot better
then I could afford on earth; but it’s
. . . oh, I . . .”

“It’s too soon. I agree,” and die
slid out of the cab. “Tha^. I hope
I can see you again after I’ve been
out in the field.” She waved as the
cab was warped away by a native
driver who looked like a cedar tree
from Carmel.

Jack-Jack Frens, with whom Har-
Gret Harker had taped a police run
when they were both learning their
craft, woke her the next morning
pounding on the door and shouting,
‘^Haggiel Haggiel the war’s over!
You came out here for nothing!”
\Vhen she jerked open the irregularly
shaped door of her room, he bound*
ed in and embraced her. “Oh, Hag,
you don’t know how good it is to see
a real woman after a year of these
creepy trees. Would you be interested
in a short-term companionship, just
for the duration?”

“You tapestealer,” she greeted him
affectionately. “1 wouldn’t companion
with you again on a bet. Snoring in
bed in one thing, but that’s a May-»
high converter you operate when you
get to sleep.”

“That’s why you can’t find a per-
manent union. Too choosy. Listen,
the pulque pool has elected you to do

all the work for the whole gang for
a week. You’ve got the fresh view.
It’ll earn us all a bonus.”

“How the Hagan did you even
know I was here?”

Jack-Jack laughed. “The concierge
told us.”

“You mean this old owl roost has
a factotum?”

He opened the door and made a
high, shrill noise. A sapling-slender
figure rushed in and bent digihtly in
a parody of respect. In falsetto, it
piped, “Honored lady, I your dave.
What can you wanted in tl^ morning?
Hot water, cold water, d^bked cof-
fee? Did I scrub your back?”

Haggle laughed. “You’re a young
Yip, right?”

“No, honored lady. I Yipper.
Your slave.”

“Do you work for the hotel?”

“No, no, I free enterpriser. My
grove burn early in war, 1 only I
alone alive to told. Newstapers adopt
me. 1 smarter than roach, spe^
Terran like politician, sleep under
stairs . . . .”

“Jack-Jack,” Har-Gret said, “you
colonial exploiter, you never land any-
where without taking on a serf.
Honey,” to the little tree, “do these
tight fisted drunks pay you any-
thing?”

“Pay?” the little creature said, its
two bulbous eyes on the front dope
of the upper mantle dive with inter-
est. “What pay meafa?”

Har-Gret struck Frens several
times with the edge of her hand.
He laughed and pai^j^ the karate
blows with his foreanns. “Wait a
minute. Haggle. She may not know

THE GUERRILLA TREES

the wor4, hut we take care of her,
and she takes care of us. She has
food, some money, speaks the best
Terran of any tree on the planet • . •
and has the best nose for news. Har-
Gret, if you hit me again. I’ll kick
you in the belly.” He raised one com-
bat boot.

“Oh, you’re hopeless. Get out of
here.” She pushed him out the door.
“Now, young lady,” and she led the
slim Yipper to ha bed, “you know
1 don’t know much about you and
your world. You’ll have to teach me.
Do you sit down?”

“Oh, sure, lady,” Yipper said,
matching action to word and cross-
ing the two separate lower portions
of her trunk at what would have been
the ankles if she had been a fourteen-
year-old girl. “Lie down too. You
want? Terrans most want that late by
night. Now?”

“Great Melt!” said Har-Gret. “You
poor child. How old are you?”

“I three next eigjit day.”

“Melt! You’re a diild. Listen, how
old is one of you with a girth like
this?” She he^ out her hands to
indicate the size of the Yipper she
had encountered in Traven^s HQ.

“Oh, ten years, fifty years. Grow
slow after fifty. Much tall by hundred
fifty, some thicker. lie down now?”
and she rippkd her mantle for a
length of about dghteen inches.

Haggle Halter was both amused
and disgusted. How does one deal
with a child whore whose most se-
ductive feature is a mushroom head
like a Tennid drawing? “listen,
baby,” she said. “I’m a different sex
from these other newstapers. You
understand sex? My ... my require-

ments are different from theirs.”
“Lady!” Yipper said. “I know sex.
We two sexes too. How were you
thought ... we scatter seeds on wind
or something? Did you show me?”
Did you show me, Har-Gret
thought. If you can comprehend sex,
why not tense? “Well, I ... oh,
Hagan, what in the melting planets’
difference can it make? 1 show you
and you show me, right? And I’ll
teach you Terran on a little more
systematic basis. I’ll bet these tape
rats have taught you a rare vocabu-
lary, but we’il make a lady Yipper
out of you yet. All right, Galatea:
show me your equipment”

III

An hour later, Har-Gret was a
much enlightened Terran. The
peculiarities of Yipsi metabolism
which allowed them to put down
roots when necessary, walk when
wanted, masticate and digest meat,
bones, vegetables, or anything else
animate when available, liad been ex-
plained to her in accented Terran
which she was working to make more
understandable even as she absorbed
information from it. The exchange of
information about parturition and
the acts leading up to it had been
fast and full, and the amount of
voluntary control Yippers could ex-
ert over their internal organization
left Haggle Harker rather envious.

A chance hint at the social organi-
zation of the Yipsi soon led the con-
versation away from biology. By
noon, Har-Gret was still pulling in-
formation out of her new found
friend. Again and again the little

creature affirmed her undying at^
tadiment for Yip Sing; but when
challenged to explain if this was a
country^ a government, a political
philosophy or a place, Yipper always
produced a tortur^ formulation
whidi Har-Gret had no trouble recog^
nizing as her friend’s translation of
Terran communiques about the em-
battled democratic Yip Sing villages.

“Are there embattled democratic
villages in Yap Sang too?”

“No villages Yap Sang. Dirty
Yaps huddle in groves. Wild, mean.
Shed leaves.”

“And do you shed your leaves?”
“Only if I have leaves,”

“Well,” Haggle said in exaspera-
tion, “do the Yapsl shed leaves ex-
cept when they have leaves?”

“On orderl Master trees in Yap
Sang wave branch, leaves fall. UghI
Turn stomach to see.”

“Why orders? What is the point
of the different way of doing things?”
‘^Master trees bosses. Down boss-
es!” the little tree whistled. Hag-
gle learned to recognize the eye roll
with which the Yipper then looked
to see if this was approved.

“Honey,” she said, “Old Haggle
doesn’t give a melted sun for all that
poisoned fertilizer. Please, please, be-
lieve me that 1 don’t care about the
objectives of my government here.
Just tell me: why should you hate
Yapsl because they drop their leaves
differently from you?’’

The fourth or fifth time, Yipper
suddenly began to leak green
gray tears down her pretty bark, not
only from her protruberant eyes, but
from the slit which encircled her

mantle. “Rootless . . . yoii rootlcssl”
she cried. “Terrans burn my grove
... all burned, nowhere but flame,
only did to breathe bum kerosene.
You mean Terran, smell from kero-
sene, every all!”

Har-Gret knew she was on to
something. Emotion unlocks truth;
and for the first time, she felt Yip-
per was saying what she felt rather
than what she thought Haggle want-
ed to hear. Trained instinct drove the
taper on. “What do you mean, burnt
your grove? And I thought you lived
in a village.”

“Village, grove, hamlet, same
same, MELT YOUR SUN!” The
sapling Yipper was weak with hate
and fright, dripping saphke tears,
branches trembling. Suddenly she
flung herself, backward on Haggle’s
bed and shrieked, “Okay! Come on!
Okay! Okay! This all any Terran
want. Melt you! Melt you!” Great
gray green tears stained the bedding.

Har-Gret Harker sat on the edge
of the rude bed and threw her arms
about the fri^tened, hate-filled sap-
ling. She gathered the little tree to
her breast and rocked back and forth
for a minute. “O Yipper, what can I
say? What can I do? I don’t know
the simplest gesture of tenderness
among your people. Poor darling, this
is the way we comfort children
among my race, and you’re a child
to me. I’m ten times as old as you,
Yipper, think of that, ten times! I’m
thirty, sweetheart, id you know
that?”

From the great mushroom head
there came a giant cough. “You no
thick in trunk. No thirty.”

“Yes, darling, oh yes, yes I am.

THE GUERRILLA TREES

I’m slender because 1 work at it,
thank you; but we don’t all gel thick
anyhow. There, can you sit up now?
SbaD I wipe your tears a li^?”
Yipper gave a great snuffling
sound, and all the tears stiB on her
tender bark disappeared into it “Well,

I told you all 1 knew. 1 went to
work now.”

“Wait a minute, Yipper. Are we
friends now? How do you say friends
in your language?”

Yipper stood silent. Har-Gret
tried again. “No word for friends in
your language?”

Yipper gave an eloquent snort.
“You not hear, not see. Our sounds
too tall for you; and you no have
twigs for the words which are see.”
“You talk with your branches?”
The dendroid made the sign which
Har-Gret recognized now as a riirug.
“AH right,” Haggie said. “I can’t hear
you and I can’t see you except in my
language. Friends t^k to each other,
even if it’s hard. So speak Terran to
me, and I promise to listen hard.
Please tell me about your grove.”

(( Tust mistake.” The great eye
stalks filmed with green mois-
ture. “Just . . . melted mistake. One
tree like another to human beings,
anyway. Every tree I love gone like
torch. I and one Yipper left, too
green to bum.”

“Another beautiful little giri like
you? What happened to her?’*

“We come here together. Yipper
will not lie down easy. She have
leaves already, see. Soldiers tear off
her bark and branches one mght, fuB
of pM/qwe.”

“They killed her?”

“Lose bark, that kill her. Sapi
out. 1 give bark, but too little to save
her.” The small tree pointed to a
hard brown scar cm one side.
“Soldiers crazy on pn/qiie.”

Har-Gret Haiker could bear to ask
no more. She made an agreonent that
Yipper would come bad: the next
day, and then she dressed herself.

An hour later, she began to doubt
that it bad happened. StOl, it was all
on the raw tape, to be wirmowed
later for that would sock Haggie
Harker’s special audience in the guts
when the reels were edited. Doubt
was fed by the careful, dieerfui brief-
ing she was receiving from one of
Travails aides. The first thing he had
done was to ask her for a date. When
she turned him down and told him
she hoped to be in the )ungle that
night, he paled visibly and hurried
into the briefing.

As the captain explained, it seem-
ed perfectly dear to Har-^ret Hark-
er that Yipsl could earily be distin-
guished from Yapsl, that there was a
real difrerence between the social or-
ganization of the two, that the nor-
thern Yipsl had a rccognizaWy “hu-
mane” government and economic
structure, that the southern Yapri
were visiNy satellites ci the dreaded
bacterial empire centered in BeteJ-
geusc, that there was a human
strategic interest of life-and-dcath na-
ture on this little planet which com-
manded a vastreach of space and was
the only planet for parsecs in any
direction habitable both by the bac-
teria and human beings, and . . . what
she bad most doubted, turning tapes
on the movieola in her ofOce on earth
. . . that Sd was slowly, painfully.

expensively^ but appreciably, winning
the war by bringing immense tech-
nology to bear, across the wide ocean
of space.

She thanked the aide, promised
him that after what she had seen in
his orientation movies of the stran-
gling trees and the new poisons elabo-
rated for them by their bacterial al-
lies and masters in Betelgeuse, she
would not venture into the night jun-
gle where the Yapsl guerrilla trees
hunted, and walked into the yellow
afternoon sun with a feeling of bear-
ings lost.

Jack-Jack Frens may be a snaffler,
she said to herself. In fact he u a
snaffler, but he’s my snaffler. Borg
Traven couldn’t sell Jack-Jack a safe
conduct through the jungle, let alone
a propaganda structure like this; and
drunk, sober or hung over, Jack-Jack
is people. So she went back to Tim-
ber Arms, stood in the lobby and
yelled, “Yipper!” When the sapling
appeared. Haggle said shortly, “Get
Jack-Jack Frens — quietly — and
bring him up to my room. Savvy?”

“Sure,” said Yipper. “You lie down
with Jack-Jack?”

Haggle grinned. “That’s too com-
plicated for me to explain in pidgin
Terran. Just hunt him up, will you?
I trust you, Yipper. Here’s half-a-
credit in advance; but 1 want him
in a hurry.”

“Sure,” said Yipper, “know that
feeling,” and she went off, mantle
rippling in a suggestive way.

T^ive minutes later, Jack-Jack Frens
1/ opened the door without knock-

ing and sauntered in with a liter ofl
ptdque in his fist “Yipper rousted
me out of the bar. Haggle. The
gang’s all there waiting for you to
dictate their tapes; but 1 figured you
either had a beat you needed help
on, or you wanted my advice with-
out advertising it.”

“Jack square,” said Haggle, “put
down that melt^ tree juice. I’ve got
a liter and a half of Quid Kennedy
Green Label in that bag over there.
Pull out a can and pour us a couple
of shots. I want some truth out of
you.”

“Harker the Hag!” he said, open-
ing the door and setting the pulque
jug on the floor in the hall. “You
never forget you’re Ace Girl Reporter,
do you? How’d you get clearance to
bring out this much mass in liquid
form?”

“Lay off, Jackling. We were
friends when we were companions,
and we’re still friends, aren’t we?”

The tall news-taper paused in his
task of evening up the contents of
two passes, looked levelly at her and
said, without his usual smile, “Til
the sim melts, Har-Gret. And to take
you off the hook. I’ll tell you Chi-An
Ling and 1 have already mailed the
contracts. She’s my permanent union,
as soon as I can get home from this
crazy greenhouse to consummate it.
Okay?”

“Jack, I’m glad for Chi-An. I
haven’t time for more congratula-
tions. Have Chi-An let me know
when the consummation party is.”

“Why, Hag, you won’t be out of
here by then. Aren’t you signed on
for a Terran year, like all the rest
of us?”

THE GUERRILLA TREES

“Sure, but you get sent home by
FTL capsule if it’s for the conveni-
ence of the advisory commission;
and it always is convenient for the
commis^on if you’re critical.”

He handed her the drink. “Hag-
gle, Hagan knows you’ve got
chutzpah enough to try anything;
but dear heart, what mostly happens
to tapers out here who offend Borg
Traven is that the bookerman carries
them off in the night. He ^ips home
mighty few; but lots of tapers have
died heroic deaths, strangled or
poisoned by the Yaps ... it says
here.”

She made a short raspberry and
said, “Well, that’s the way the fix
fax, Jax. Thanks for the warning,
and no, thanks. Give me what you
know, and I’ll burn the tape from
here to Terra. I don’t want your own
stuff . . . just the background it
takes a year to get But Til be look-
ing at it without a year of drinking
pulque and listening to Captain
Stinks of the Horse Marines, that
melting p.r. officer . . . yes, and
without a year of lying down with
underage trees.”

He colored, and laughed uneasily.
“Oh, well, come on, Har-Gret, a man
is not made of wood.” He giggled
and said, “Well, I guess that’s an un-
fortunate way to put it Sha Hagan!
Leave my sex life out of this. It was
no concern of yours the day you
packed your ear plugs and left.”

She laughed explosively. “Chi-An
Ling! She’s got more sensitive ears
than L We were a four once, and I
remember. Chi-An was the one who
slept down the hall, while the other

three of us sawed wood at each
Other.”

Jack looked uncomfortable. “WeD,
one clause of the contract is that I’ll
have my septum relocated jmd my
soft palate plasticized. What in Selva’s
name do you want from me?”
“What’s all this tree-sweat about
villages and groves?”

“Look, Hag, it’s just that earth
people can visualize a village as being
on our side a lot carier than a grove;
and they don’t think of a bombed
grove or a burned grove as having
people in it — as being people; so
we call them Yipsl villages and Yap
groves. Who cares how many Yap
groves we incinerate?”

He drank deep. “Har-Gret, we’re
destroying the ecology of the planet.
When we win ... of course, we
will win, technology always wins . . .
there won’t be any planet left . . .
not for these people. It’ll stiH be here
for us, and we will have denied it to
the bacteria. But Yips? No, sweet-
heart, no Yip Sing, no Yap Sang,
not a talking tree left in the universe.
That’s going to be our victory. I’m
sorry you only got a liter and a half
of this corn whisky. I’d like, just one
night, to get plastered enough not to
remember all those dendroids out
there, burning and strangling. You
brought my favorite brand. I’ll say
that. Did you- remember I used to
drink it before it was advertised?”

“I brought it because I learned to
like it from you. Is there any real
difference between Yips and Yap^?”

He took a long pull of the hun-
dred-proof rocket fuel her influ-
ence had brought to La Selva. Then

he sighed. “Got any Japanese friends,
Haggie?”

“Sure. You remember that fat
Sumo wrestler we used to follow.
After you and I split, I spent a
summer with his entourage. His wife
was tiny, like Chi-An. His brother
was two meters tall, without an ounce
of fat on him. That what you mean?”

“Exactly. They look different, but
all regard themselves as Japanese. Any
difference between them as individuals
is a difference in philosophy or edu-
cation or politics. You can’t see that
Jn the shape of a head or the measure-

THE GUERRILLA TREES

ment from the floor to the top knot.”
“You’re telling me the difference
here is a political difference.”
Jack-Jack shook his head. “I don’t
think I am, am I? I didn’t mean to.”
“All right, Jack square, what do
you mean?”

He drained the glass and poured
another. “I mean the difference is
whether they live in the southern
hemisphere, where the forests are in-
fected by the bacteria, or in the
northern hemisphere, which we infest.
And that’s the only difference,”
“Jack,” she said. “Stop drinking
for one melted minute. You are say-
ing that we are destroying a whole
species because of our struggle against
the bacteria?”

“Ye-a-ess.”

“No other reason?”

“None.”

“The southern aggression?” she
asked wistfully.

“Hagan o Hagan! The planet’s
tilted, like home! What Groendyk saw
was the spring renascence in the
south and the autumn leaves falling
in the north. The bacteria were in
the south already. They would have
appeared in the north in its next
spring; so we moved in there in the
dead of winter . . . and claimed the
green spring as a great opening vic-
tory for our technology.”

“What about the democratic vil-
lages of the north?”

“’Sno villages,” Frens spoke
thickly, tears in his eyes. “Only
grovesy north and south. True trees
in groves, and at the center of every
grove a family of those dendroids.
They live with the trees, grow with
them, protect them, cultivate them.

Some grovesh’re hunnert milez acrosh.
In the middle of a forest like that,
there may be three or four Yips a
hunnert’n’fif y feet tall, and one ole
gran’pappy two hunnert feet high.
That’s all. No villages, no govern-
ment, no votes, no historic democra-
tic tradition, nothing; just the trees
and the den^oids.”

“Then what in Selva’s name are we
doing here?”

“Good strategic reason. B44(3) is
the command planet for one enor-
mous globe of q>ace. We can live
here, and the bacteria can live here.
Not another planet with the right
specs for a third of a spiral arm. So
it’s us or them . . . but, baby, it’s tough
on trees.”

Jack-Jack drained another gjass of
the Green Label and lay back across
the bed. “This short-out juice is gon-
na cut off my computer in a few
more minutes. Hag. If I get sick, jush
drag me in and prop my head over
the disposal unit. Hell of a war.”
Har-Gret said, “I may be there
ahead of you. Cold strategy makes a
cold supper, Jacko. Not one human
idea in the whole lash-up, except that
it’s us or the bugs . . . and melt the
Yips. Hard times on YipYap.”

Next morning, predictably. Haggle
Harker was hung over, a con-
dition which always presaged a hard
time for the object of her researches.
She had Yipper drag Jack-Jack Frens
off to his own cubicle in the early
dawn. He was so hung that working
it off was out of the question. He
would do well to sleep it off in a

single day. Har-Gret showered
angrily and ^ot into her coverall.
She was in line for a tour of govern-
ment bureaus that mc»mmg, meeting
the local administrators who held Yip
Talltree’s writ; but llaggie wanted to
get out of the Sodom she felt the
city now to be. She wanted to see
what Terran boys were being trans-
lated out to La Selva by FTL cap-
sule to do. She was honest ^ough
with herself to know that there was
some point at which she would feel
that the destiny of the dendroids
didn’t matter, some point at which
the survival of her own branch of
the human race would be sufficient-
ly* important After all, they were the
bearers of the democratic tradition,
though its present computerized,
totally industrialized form might seem
strange to Jefferson or Danton. Then
she would shrug and say, “That’s the
way the fix fax,” and mean it.

If justice and human compassion
were scheduled to die throughout the
galaxy, but that death could be fore-
stalled by the sacrifice of one small
planet. Haggle Marker would press
the button, conceding the injustice
of that planet’s having been chosen
by hers to do all the dying for both.
But pressing one button, the dassic
choice of the philosophers, was dif-
ferent from being asked to affirm and
approve an endless series of green tree
burnings and flooding out of forests
old enough to support creatures like
Yipper, but a hundred feet tall. Sav-
ing one’s own world and way of life
somehow failed to justify the casual
cruelty of painting a hotel name
on the stripped skin of a dead den-
droid.

So the time had come for Haggie
to satisfy herself as to the actual con-
tent of the war. There was no front,
only “(^rations”; and it was fuQy
fifteen minutes before Haggie Marker
was recognized by two bug sergeants
and, wb^ she confessed ^e wanted
to see a combat sweep without the
clearance of the top deckers,
smug^d onto the flame deck of a
jumper.

An hour later, the “boys” — and
they were boys> that was the Hagan
of it — were gleefully pouring the
undying lire into the heart of a
grove so massive and so old that it
seemed like a green mountain.
Around the flickering edges of the
flame, the darker flickering of fleeing
bacteria could be seen, bursting into
corona-hke arms visible throu^ the
fhewatching goggles the young Ter-
rans had lent the famous news-taper.

(4*0 urn those bugs!” the young

•13 men shouted, while the range
finder monotonously ordered the fire
to be spread, repeating again and
again, “Bacteria moving out north by
west . . . one mile west . . . flames
one hi^, two high, and spread ...”

Meanwhile one of the bug sergeants
was explaining. “The whole base of
this flitter craft is sensitized to the
presence of bacteria in any significant
concentration. We’ve had our eye on
this patch of forest for about a week.
It’s a main stop on the infection
route, and they’re probably dug in
fifty meters below the roots of those
innocent-lookiDg trees. That’s why
we can’t let the fire die. It has to
keep burning until there isn’t a living
thing here. Then we consider that

THE GUERRILLA TREES

we already have secured the grove.”
“But there’s no grove left. When
dcfes it grow back?”

“I don’t know. Haggle. I just work
here. You know what I mean: they
don’t tell us that; but some of the
ecology boys say it may be a hundred
YipYap years.”

“Do they fight back?”

“Well, no, the trees can’t do much,
at this distance. The big dendroids
snap those long tentacles like cata-
pults, and sometimes they can throw
a load of bacteria near enough to do
some damage. We’ve lost three-four
thousand men that way.”

“I thought our technical superi-
ority was such that no Terrans were
being lost in combat.”

The sergeant looked at her. He
was a professional, and he would be
here after the draft of boys he was
running on this sweep were home or
dead. His look was the weary, cynical
one with which the combat man has
always regarded home front propa-
ganda.

“But surely the greatest number of
losses is from sabotage and from the
guerrilla trees?”

“Oh, sure. When you walk out of
a saloon with a tree tart on your arm
and a tentacle drops around your neck
or poison sap spews in your eyes, it’s
a bad war. Ma’am.”

Just then Haggle got a better dem-
onstration than she ever wanted
to remember of the fighting capa-
bilities of the tall dendroids. There
suddenly appeared at an open gunport
a fuzzy black cloud which sucked it-
self into the jumper even as Haggle
was screaming and pointing. Nothing

she had ever seen on her colleagues*
tapes made her realize that the bac-
teria were intelligent more than the
deadly way in which the little cloud
oriented itself, shot like an arrow to
the guidance controller and killed him
with a fulminating infection that
struck so fast he never cried out.

As the ship automatically began to
sink toward the forest, the dead man
turned black. Clouds of black erupt-
ed from every orifice of his body,
each headed for a different member
of the crew. A black blister made un-
erringly down the dead controller’s
umbilical cord to the organic gui-
dance mechanism, and killed it. The
noise of propulsion died; the roaring
flame nipples blew out; the only
noises in the vessel were people whim-
pering with haste to get their bug-
proofs on, and the rush of air as the
ship fell more and more headlong.

From outside and below came the
sound Har-Gret Harker could never
forget. The burning trees were
screaming.

It was that agony of noise she
remembered, retching and crying in
the rescue boat that had swung over
them and taken off the few survivors.

When she faced Borg Traven the
next day. Haggle Harker knew
her face had wrinkles she would never
be able to iron out. “General,” she
said, in the tone news-tapers adopt
when they expect to be lied to, but
have to ask a question for the record,
“what justification can there be for
the suffering we are causing to the
trees and dendroids of this world?
Surely there is some strategic objec-
tive to be gained short of a world

of ashes. Even if we were justified
in destroying a whole unique species
because of our own danger, can we
justify doing it with flame-jumpers?”

Borg Traven sat completely immo-
bile for a moment. Then he passed
a great hand over bis face, and the
face that emerged from that message
was infinitely sad. “We explain what
we do by the necessity of our own
lives, if the trees would only throw
off the infection and stop resisting
long enough for us to begin rebuild-
ing what we have destroyed, we
would leave this a garden world,
with only a few strategic enclaves to
assure the bacteria could not intiltrate
without our knowing in time to fight
them off.

“I don’t condone brutality, and I
don’t enjoy the spectacle of Terran
boys pulling the bark off tied down
trees and enjoying it. I know how
they feel, though. When you’ve got to
get irrformation and you’re dealing
with organisms that are resistant to
questioning drugs, you’ve got to be
awfully patient and tolerant not to feel
that torture is a justified shortcut.
Boys who*ve seen their friends
strangled and poisoned and blinded
right here in town by killer trees
that just slip into the forest, sink their
roots in the soil and become indistin-
guishable from the rest of the jrfants
can’t be expected to be as tolerant
and patient as you and I are.

“One last thing: don’t forget that
the technique of bark stripping was
taught us by the dendroids. They
practice it on each other.”

‘Tve heard about that. They girdle
a dendroid that’s invaded territory be-
longing to another grove, blind him

THE GUERRILLA TREES

and point him for home as a lesson
to the others in his grove. It’s some-
thing they’ve been doing for thou- ^
sands of years. Bark stripping is a
part of their culture, and an u^y
part; but at least ifs isolated, it has ^
some relation to what are valid cul-
tural goals for them. Ifs bestiality
for us. We institutionaliTO sadism
when we let it happen. We’re sup-
posed to be the most advanced tech-
nological planet in the galaxy. Is the
best technique for questioning prison-
ers that we can come up vnSi a par-
ticularly unrefined brand of torture?”

The general looked strai^t at her,
agony in his eyes. “Is that the thing
that most worries and frig^ens you?
Not me. At least when yorfre tortur-
ing some creature, you have a re-
lationship with it, however twisted.
What sickens me is the genocide we’re
working on the whole planet. We’ve
killed enough trees already to alter
the ecology of the jtenet Ifs be-
coming gr^ually less desirable and
more expensive for the bacteria to
maintain their infection outposts; but
we’re doing it by using the first tech-
nical discovery man ever made —
fire. Did you hear any trees scream-
ing when yon were falling into that
burnout yesterday?”

“Yes,” she said, pressing her hands
to her eyes. Somehow, if she could
erase the image of miles of green
trees in unnatural flame, she could
get the dreadful sound out of her
ears.

“All rightr* General Traven
said, leaning forward and grasping
both her wrists so he could pull her
hands away from her eyes. “You got
yourself into that before you were

ready for it. I can’t protect you from
youraelf. 1 have no illusions about
that. No general can restrain a news-
taper who knows half his non-coms
from a dozen other brushfire wars.
You can go anywhere and see any-
thing you want to. The only way I
could stop you would be to shove
you in an FTL capsule and zeep
you back to earth; and I’d be dead
on every news-tape in the galaxy if I
did. But Har-Gret, this is an ugly
green world out here. Will you just
let me control your time for the next
two days? I promise you’ll be briefed
on some items the pulque pool
doesn’t even know exist. At the end
of that time, the world is yours; or
the Yip Sing part, anyway. How
about it?”

She nodded with tears glittering
on her eyelids.

“Now,” he said, I’ve got to get
you out of this office. Or I never
will.” And he smiled a real smile.

The p.r. captain’s eyes opened
when General Traven described
the briefing to be given Har-Gret
Marker on the new technlogy about
to come into play in the war. Borg
Traven’s orders were certainly not to
be questioned by any creature as low
as a captain, however, and the news-
taper soon found herself talking to
lab men and technicians who had
been FTL-zeeped out to get the
new weaponry into action.

“Actually,” one of them said in the
accents of Old Oxford, “we shall give
up doing anything to the trees as
groups and groves. We are going to

reduce General Traven’s war to a
man-to-man, or 1 suppose 1 should
say, man-to-dendroid combat. We
have a new filter — there, slip that
over your head — that’s good for a
hundred hours against even the den-
sest swarm of bacteria. The soldier
will be equipped with a personal
flitter — oh, you’re familiar with
them? One forgets you’ve just come
out, yourself — with which he can
escape from a strangler tree. The
head filter ought to hold off the
poisons as well as the bacteria. The
offensive weapon is this little aerosol
pistol. See? The sidepack carries
forty recharges, and we figure the
whole thing is good for eighty den-
droids, given optimum conditions.”
“What does it do?”

“Why, Miss Marker, it’s a rapid
rot agent. Beauty is it only gets the
dendroid, or the one or two trees in
a small grove that have been in-
fected by the bacteria. You know,
it’s harshly hard work for the buw
to infect trees — real wooden trew,
I mean. The metabolism of the den-
droids is such that it’s much easier;
but the bugs can’t afford to reduce
all the dendroids on the planet to
acute illness. Then they’d have no-
body to run the place for them, col-
lect their space tolls, conduct lim-
ited negotiations with us and all that.
When we get these into full produc-
tion and front-line use, the action
will take a dramatic change.”

“We’ll be burning them one at a
time instead of in groves?”

The Oxonian mustache twitched a
little. “Ye-es, you could say that.
Rotting is a slow sort of bum. And

since this takes place in twenty-four
to tiiirty-six hours, you might say
that Stfl], it’s rather more humane
than a burnout, where a whole grove,
seedlings, saplings, tall trees and all
gets reduced to ash. Don’t you
think?”

“Oh yes,” Haggle replied. “Does
it reduce the one creature that’s been
sprayed to a pile of smoking ash? As
an example to the rest of the com-
munity, that sort of thing?”

“Miss Harker, I have the feeling
you’re pulling my mustache. Don’t
you want to deny this planet to the
bugs?”

“Hagan o Hagan! How many
ritual obeisances do you people
want? Of course I want this planet
and the whole universe bacteria
clean. I just don’t want every other
animate, intelligent creature in the
galaxy ganging up on us because
we’re as bad as the bugs. Do I have
to can General Traven to get a
straight answer to my question? What
is the actual physiological effect of
this stuff on the particular dendroid
sprayed with it? Is he reduced to
ash?”

“N-no, not — not quite. It’s a
rapid rot, but the net effect is just
that of a very old, hdlow tree. The
wood goes, and the bark becomes
porous and crumbly, gilows in the
dark, you know. Everything decays
except those thomylike things around
the trunk near the ‘head’ — haven’t
you noticed them?”

“Yes,” Haggle said, “but I
shouldn’t call them thorns. Not like
rose thorns or even cactus thorns.
They’re soft spines, like on a young
citrus tree; even the points are soft.”

THE GUERRILLA TREES

“Well, something in this stuff
stimulates the growth center for those
organs — if that’s what they are; ap-
pendages I suppose would be a better
term. They become about a foot and
a half long and extremely hard. About
the consistency of good teak or heavy
mahogany, I should say. The thorns
are really all that’s left.”

“Here’s the important question,”
Haggle said. “When do we get enou^
of this stuff to make the difference
in the character of the war and to
start winning it?”

“Oh, we’re winning it now. Miss
Harker. The flit-flamers, the defdi-
ants, the water-firing rifles that burst
the whole inside of a tree out, these
devices are carrying the war to vic-
tory, as a war. They’re too effective.
Have you seen them in action?”

“I helped kill a whole grove thirty
miles acro§s with them,” Har-Grct
Harker said through gritted teeth. ‘Tf
they finally come through with long-
life pills and I live to be a thousand,
maybe I’ll forget it. You’re haahup
right they’re too effective.”

The technical man colored.

“Hashly, if you don’t mind,
Miss Harker. Hashup was an ob-
scenity at my school.”

“Melt your sun! And your hashed-
up school too. Can’t you give me one
straight answer, without simpering?
When? When will we win this war
by technology, instead of just
slaughtering a world ... by tech-
nology?”

“Doctor Xylophage ... do you
know of him? A Venusian, you
know. Personally, I .find him a let
more repulsive than a nice, clean,

well mannered dendroid with sense
enough to keep the dirt off its roots
in a house. But it takes all sorts of
efforts in a war. Doctor Xylophage»
who invented the rotting agent, says
that we ought to have the kinks out
of the weaponry in another year. Say
a year more to get it all in the pipe-
line, and the war should be over in
three years at most.

“You see, the great thing is the
dendroids won’t be able to resist this.
They don’t have weapons in any con-
ventional sense. Strangling with ten-
tacles is something they’re physically
adapted for; and poisoning by ex-
creting liquids through their roots is
something they’ve been doing to con-
trol the breeding of the true trees for
hundreds of thousands of years. But
they have no technology, as we un-
derstand the term. No machines, no
metal. When they had this world all
to themselves, it was a gigantic green-
house, and even the tenders of the
plants had become treelike: the den-
droids.

“When we get the delivery sys-
tem elaborated, every human being
on the planet will wear the filters
whenever he’s out of doors. There
won’t be any night patrols. A few
months, really, free of strangling and
poisoning, rotting down the leaders
of the Yap infiltration from the
south, and we’ll have B44(3) but-
toned down like Kew Gardens.”

“Three years! Three yearsV* Des-
pite the hardening she had endured
in a dozen ugly, necessary human
actions she had reported on planets
across the Terran side of the galaxy,
there was something basically anti-
human in the thought of continuing

the burning and destruction of the
groves for two or three more years
that sickened and horrified Har-Gret
Harker.

She fled from the technical brief-
ing, convinced beyond doubt that
es^ would win by the shaped and
directed power of its industry and the
gadgeteers who had never failed to
find better — deadlier — methods
of disposing of earth’s enemies and
of neutrals whose neutrality partook
of enmity, but also convinced that
the history of the reduction of La
Selva would be remembered in every
un-human planet in the galaxy and
that earth would never again be
trusted. Cultures who had never
known the genuine blessings of com-
puterization could be forgiven if they
did not embrace it at once. To such
a culture, even the deadening influ-
ence of the bacteria, who infected a
world by controlling its every leader
in a state of chronic illness, might
seem preferable.

The worst thing for Haggle Hark-
er was that she knew she and she
alone, at this stage, could put the
whole dreadful story on tape. And she
knew she had to. It was too late for
her to root out the motivations that
had become part of her character
along with the hardening in the wars
she had reported.

Tell all, tell true, was her motto.
She could not renounce it. Not now.
Not ever.

VII

In a visible, seething rage, she went
back to Timber Arms. In her
room, she slammed and locked the

iU-£ittmg door. For a few minutes^
she sank on the bed, crying. Then
she stood up and headed for the
mirror cubicle to repair the ravages
of her tears. She ghnced once around
the room and slammed the door to
the mirror cubicle. The metal pow-
der and rouge case she tried to open
resisted her fumbling fingers, and
winding up like the legendary Don
Wilson, she threw it to the floor.
The silver object bounced three feet
high, and as it came to rest with a
rattle, a tiny voice was heard issuing
from the bottom of it. *That you.
Haggler

‘Tes,” she hissed, squatting on her
heels. **Sam, open me up a whole
tape bank. I want one solid hour on
tonight’s reeL You’ve got the stuff on
the flame treatments we’ve been
holding because the administration
says they’re Yap propaganda. Sam, I
was there. I helped bum a thirty-
mile grove, and Sam, I heard them.
Some of it’s on the tape bank here
in my room. You just run that video
we’ve been holding behind my audio,
and we’ll bum a few woodenheads
of our own.”

The compact answered, ”Can’t to-
night, baby. Draft riot in New Chica-
go, and the Administrative Chairman
himself is out there, showing the local
love-chiefs how to push buttons.
We’re covering it live. Yours will
have aH the more carombof when we
run it tomorrow night, right after the
Ad Chair closes his press conference
with an assurance that everything is
all ri^t, everything is necessary, and
anyway, weYe winning the good fight.
Comfortable, kid? Lie down or sit
down and cEcfate.”

Two hours later, she was beat»
drained, and shivering from the
reaction to high-speed orgaidzati«
of the material in her head and on
her tongue. The little transmittef,
which tapped the galactic flow in
the same way the FTL capsules ^d,
hut which had not yet been thought
about in the admhnstration’^s labfl^
was the secret weapon with winch
Haggle Barker had come to La
Selva inrepared to topple a militaiy
public relations machine which seem-
ed to brainwash news-tapers. Sam
Smackover, her editor, had said,
"Haggle, we believe in machines^ 1
could make out a pretty good argii^
ment that we worship machines; or
the idea of the machine, anyway.
What’s happening to those tapers out
there is that Borg Traven’s dirowing
them in a jumper, they see a grove
burning with few losses of human
soldiers, the hurt ones being zeeped
back to hospital and operated on just
as soon as they’re infected, even the
bacteria, schizzy as they are, being
held off and gradually worn down
by our machines, on a worM thafs
so non-tecbnological it basnet got the
wheel.

“Every one of us is susceptible,
in such a situaiion, to thinking how
murii better off those people would
be with good old Terran high speed
waste disposal, portable shower
baths, and ordering food by compu-
ter. Would they really? Do they real-
ly want this from us? Are we win-
ning, even if we are winning?

“Th& Bttle gadget is my insur-
ance policy you won’t get brainwash-
ed. You get on this FTL transmitter,
for Hagan’s sake without anyone

THE GUERRILU TREES

seeing or hearing you» within a cou«
pie days after you get there. 1 want
that emotion fresh and hot Give me
everything you’ve been saving for
that permanent union» baby; because
you may not get back from out there
after we get this on the reel It may
be the last tape you’ll ever dictate or
ru ever splice ”

Now she had done all Sam asked,
all she asked of herself. Why wait?
For a long time, she looked at two
bottles of pills, picking up first one
and then fte other. In the end, she
took the dreambits rather than the
quickdeath, but she could not have
told why.

Next day, of course, was another
day. Life so feeds on itself that
just to be alive compels us to go on
living, and living compels us to do
things as if there woidd be an in-
finity of days in which to do them.
Haggle shopped for souvenirs in the
morning, had a curiously teetotal
lunch with Jack-Jack Frens, and in
the afternoon responded to a com-
municator call from General Tra-
ven’s office. When the general asked,
in his diffident way, if he might
give her dinner, she shrugged. She
could not feel ^at he was as anti-
human as the policies he administer-
ed. She was sure that she would
never be asked to dinner by him
again after word of her tape got
back. That would be three weeks by
tight beam radio, a week if they sent
it by FTL courier, or a day, if the
administration seized the FTL trans-
mitter from All-Planet News and her
instrument were in the hands of Borg
Traven. Should she give it to him?

She could not decide; but she took
it in her gold mesh evening bag.

For this evening, Haggle had
chosen not to wear the coverall which
was so easy to hide within. She had
one good cocktail dress with her,
one set of accessories, and she dis-
posed the whole ensemble to do her-
self full justice. Why? she asked her-
self. I know Fll never be even a com-
panion to this man, let alone join
a permanent union. One-night jumps
were never my style. So why the
trouble? He said a native restaurant
• • • that always means romance, on
these colonial outposts. She stiffened
her back, so that her ear drops hung
like plumb bobs, and said to herself,
At least he’ll Imow a real woman
did it to him. Let his sun melt!

She got into the cab beside a
general resplendent in as near full
dress uniform as regulations would
permit in a combat zone. To her
surprise, he also carried a side arm;
and from a small knapsack on the
seat, he extracted one of the new fil-
ters for her to wear. “Wait a min-
ute,’’ she said, drawing back from
the proffered filter, “what kind of
place are we going to? I think I’d
prefer the officer’s club, even if your
rank scares everybody else out of the
place.’’

He smiled his little boy smile, and
said, “My rank couldn’t keep those
juice jockeys away from you, Har-
Gret. You are a lovely woman, and
none of us has seen anything like
you in a year.’’

“Well, where are we going?’’

“It’s a genuine place. There may
not be another human being besides
us. No human food on the menu. But

IF,

it’s secure. The filter is because we
do have to transit a burnout near
the edge of town, and there are
saplings growing back in the area.**
“Saplings!” she cried. “Must we
fear saplings?”

“Oh, they have roots, these young
dendroids. That means they can spray
poison. It might not be fatal, but I’ve
no mind to be blind either.” They
both slipped on the masks, but the
burned section was hardly a hundred
meters across, and they felt a little
foolish when the cab deposited them
at the restaurant without incident.
Just before they arrived. Haggle
asked, “How can you trust this Yip?
Why aren’t you in a command car?”
“We’re not in a command car be-
cause I want to forget, just for to-
night, what my job is out here. I
trust her, anyhow . . . that’s right, it’s
your old friend from the office. Here,
Yipper,” he suddenly shouted, “turn
around and give Miss Harker a hello
smile!”

The toadstool head slowly twisted
until the bulbous eyes on top were
directed at Haggle. The mantle slit
rippled for two feet, and the den-
droid said quietly, “I Yipper, Okay.”

The restaurant was unbelievably
lovely and serene. It was not ,
exactly a building, but neither was
it just a clearing in the woods. The
light was hard to trace to its sources,
great luminescent insects who flut-
tered slowly overhead. The food and
drink, thou^ exotic, were well with-
in the range of human metabolism
and appetite.

Har-Gret Harker looked at General
Traven over the liqueurs, which
smoked greenly in leafy cups, and
said, “Borg, you’re a good man. I
don’t know why you’re doing a bad
man’s job. I don’t want to hear your
formula justifications for it. You
love this world, and you love the
people. I can tell that you even un-
derstand a little of the dendroid
language. If you had twigs, you’d
try to speak it. I just want to say
to you that you, you as Borg Traven,
an existent human being, not Gen-
eral Borger Traven as a memory
pulse back at earth central computer,
need to go. Now! While there’s some-
thing to remember. This restaurant
won’t be here in a year, Borg. This
world wiQ be a ball of ashes, and you
can’t stand to be here and keep push-
ing the buttons that make it happen.
Get out!”

Just then a tiny pinging sounded
on his wrist, and he lifted it to listen.
In a moment, he said, “You’re right.
I’m killing La Selva, and Selva’s
death is killing me. I’m caught. I
have my job to do, and I believe in
it. I believe in Terra’s computerized
democracy, and I hate the dead
worlds where the bacteria rule. I’m
willing to die myself to keep the
bugs from Terra. Why shouldn’t a
world, even a green and pleasant one
like this, be willing to die for the
same thing? There are a million
worlds in the galaxy. Shall I let my
affection — my love, if you like —
for this one kill them all?

“Come on. My wrist communi-
cator just summoned me back to the
office. There’s a massive night attack
ten miles down the line from our

THE GUERRILU TREES

enclave here, and something new is
happening. I’ve got to get out there
and see for myself. I’ll drop you at
the hotel”

She sat frozen. “I heard what your
duty officer said. I heard it on this
thing in my handbag.”

He nodded, unsmiling. “Yeah. Not
much reaUy gets away from the
central computer labs, you know. We
didn’t know All-Planets had it, or
you would have been searched when
you got here. And yesterday after-
noon, we couldn’t get a fix on you
to shut you up. Where in Selva’s
name were you?”

“In my bathroom,” she replied
mechanic^y. “But . . . doesn’t it

make any difference to you that I’ve
tripped the switch on the whole mur-
derous adventure? That tape will light
fires on earth from one pole to the
other. Or will it be shown?” Now
she was frightened.

“Oh, sure it’ll be shown. Com-
puter democracy. It just won’t make
any difference. The machine is too
directed toward this war. La Selva
is too strategic a planet. Doubts are
too costly. If we drop back here, we
drop back all across the galaxy. It
means abandoning a thousand plan-
ets. So YipYap is going to die,
that all the rest may live. People
feel the administration must know
more than they about what’s best.
Come on.”

They walked in silence to the cab,
and rode silently for a few minutes.
As they approached the burnout, so
that they were out of the shade, the
tiny planet’s tinier moon cast its
aquamarine light into the cab. Gen-

THE GUERRILLA TREE^

eral Traven’s head was back on the
cushion. He seemed too weary even
to adjust the filter. Haggle had
slipped hers on, but she felt foolish,
even only ten miles away from where
trees were killing human soldiers.
Something new, she thought, what
could that be?

The cab glided into the burnout.
“This good place,” hissed the den-
droid driver. The cab stopped, and
as Borg Traven sat up and reached
for his side arm, soldier’s instincts
aroused at last, a root appeared over
the back of the seat and a concen-
trated jet of poisonous liquid spread
over the general’s face. It was so
virulent that it had not yet begun
to drip on his uniform when he sank
back, dead.

“Yipper,” said Haggie, in a trans-
port of fear, “don’t kill me. You
can’t kill me, anyway, I have the
filter on. 1 won’t let you strangle me,
because I have the general’s pistol.
It fires the exploding water, Yip-
per! Sit still and listen. I’m your
friend. Yes, and Yapsl’s friend, too.
I love this world and its people, all
of them. I don’t care what we want
here, Yipper, we’re wrong to be
here. I’ve sent the word to the earth
that may get us all off La Selva.
Take be back to the hotel and I’ll
help more. I’ll say Traven was all
right when he left me off. You can
just disappear into the forests . . .
or go back to the office. I don’t
care. I can help you, Yipper, more
than any other human being. Let me
live, Yipper, and I’ll let you live. I’ll
help your people to live, thousands
of them.”

“No good human beings,” the

IF • Short Story

CAGE
OF ' ?
BRASS

by SAMUEL R. DELANY

They were the rejects of the
galaxy, condemned to living
death until the end of time !

Describe the darkness inside Brass?

It was too complete to fix with
words. He shunted and shuttled
through the dark until he stopped in
one of the cells, was lowered by
mechanical hands into the glycerine
coffin, and the lid fell like a feather

“He cornin’ roun’ nowl”

. • who are . . .?”

“I’m Hawk, gnmter. And that’s — ”
“I’m Pig. Hawk wants ’a know
what they got ya for.”

“Oh. I ... my name . . .”
“That’s it, baby. Give Hawk what

falling on a mound of feathers. That
darkness? Perhaps you could hint at
it with a lack of words. Perhaps you
could hint at it by saying that once
the voices came, there was nothing
else:

he wants. Hawk always gets what he
wants.”

“‘S’right. You tell ’im, Hawk.”

“. . . Cage. Jason Cage.”

“Who’d you cross. Cage, to get
stored down here in the sub-base-

“Heyl”

“. • . aaaaaaah ...”

“Heyl What’s your monicker, bud-
dy-boy?”

“I don’t tink he wake up yet.”

“Shut up! Hey, come on and give
with something beside the grumbly-
gruntsl”

“. . . . aaah . . • wha . . .?”

ment with the likes of us?”

“I . . . look, leave me alone!”
“No!”

“I don’t ... I just want to be
left — ”

“I’ll make Pig do his hollering act.
Baby, that’ll drive you battier than
you feel now. Go on, Pig. Holler.”
“Aloooah — glogalogologologa —

Rheeeeeeeshijmny\ Biminy! Whiminyl
Zapologologola — ”

. aU rightr

**You don^ get left alone, Mister
Jason Cage. 1 been here a year now
with nothing but Pig to babble with.
And they burned out half his brain
before they dumped him down here.
No, you ain’t going to be left alone.
You talk to me!”

“Hawk wants ’a know what they
got you here in Brass for.”

“And you’re going to tell Hawk
why they got you here in Brass. You
hear that. Mister half-asleep Cage?”
“(breath) . . . (breath) ... I
guess you fellows don’t get too many
newspapers down here.”

“Never read no newspapers even
when I weren’t here (chuckle).”
“Shut up. Pig! Come on. Spill,
Cage.”

“I don’t want to talk about — ”
“Talk!”

“I’ll tell ya all ’bout me if ya tell
me ’bout you. Ya gotta talk. Mister
Cage. I heard jus’ ’bout all there is
to hear about Hawk. An* there ain’t
much left to hear ’bout me. Please,
Mister Cage — ”

“Shut it. Pig. Cage: Talk, I said.”
“All . . . right. All right. But it
hurts.”

“Hurt, Cage.”

“They ain’t put us in Brass to
make us happy — ”

“There’s a world out there. What
world do you come from. Hawk?”

A place called Krags, from a
city called Ruption, where the
streets are cracks down to the hot
core of the planet, and lava broils up
with sulphur and brim.”

“Yeah, yeah, you told me all
about Ruption, where the green
and yellow smoke twines up between
the balconies of the rich men’s
palaces in the charred evening — ”
“Shut up. Pig. Go on. Cage.”
“Don’t shut up. Pig. What about
you?”

“You wanna know where I’m
from. Mister Cage?”

“He’s from a world called Alba,
Cage.”

“Yeah, an’ a city called Dusk.
Dusk is in the mountains, where we
got caves cut way down in the ice,
and sunset and ^wn flame in the
fog and make the ice dance like dia-
monds.”

“I’ve heard it. Pig. Let Cage talk.”
“Well I come from a world called
. . . Earth.”

“Earth?’’

“Be quiet. Pig!”

“From a city called Venice. At
least that’s where I was arrested,
where I was tried, and where I was
sentenced to spend the rest of my
life in Brass. Venice? There the ocean
comes and makes streets between the
great palazzos and crowded slums
strung with clothes lines, where the
motorboats stop on the market street,
decks spread with cabbages and to-
matoes and persimmons and mussels
and artichokes and clams and lob-
sters. Where the visitors and the
architectural students and the bankers
and the artists stroll down the tiled
trapezoid of the Piazza, move among
the pink columns of the Doge’s
Palace, come and walk down the
waterfront and gaze into the cana-
letti where the Bridge of Si0n arches
between the Doge’s palace and the

old dungeon. Where the students will
see you wandering by yourself with
the park on one side and the sea on
the other, and run up to you and
slap your back and teU you to come
with them, and drag you back to the
Vaporetto that winds down the grand
canal, singing and joking with the
girls, while I try to point out to
Bruno the historic bits of architecture
that have fascinated men of earth
since Ruskin. They storm down the
alley to the Mensa, rollick over the
Ponte Academia, its boards brown
and hung with moss underneath, pass
the little wine shops, then upstairs,
where you pound on the doors to
make the cooks let you in and then
everybody is eating and singing, and
Bruno is telling you that it is all right,
not to worry, and you cannot be sad
any more because it is Venice . . . . ”
“Hey, wa’ ’sa matter. Mister
Cage?”

“Go on. Cage.”

“Have either of you ever seen
Brass from the outside?”

“Sure as hell can’t see it from the
inside.”

“Shut up, Pig. No.”

“It’s on a plane of rock and snow.
Even the clouds are scrawny. They
shroud the nights and let the stars
peak down on Brass itself. And it just
sits there and doesn’t look back.”

4 ® supposed to have

seen Brass, Mr. Cage.”
“Yeah, how’da ya know what it
looks like?”

“I’ve seen a picture. I’ve seen
many things I’m not supposed to
have seen. Pig. I was an architectural
student, you see.”

“On Earth?”

“In Venice?”

“That’s right. I was once allowed
access to the plans. 1 got a chance
to see where all the corridors go and
where they come from.”

“You did?”

“I could tell you where every
brick and block on Hagia Sofia is
placed and mortared. I could tell you
how they put together the optical-
illusory temple of Ancqor on the
world of Keplar down to the last
mirror. And I know every blind cor-
ridor and twist and turn and gate
and time lock and drainage conduit
in Brass.”

“You do?”

“Hey, you mean you know how
you could get out of here?”

“Venice ...”

“Hey, Hawk. Maybe Cage knows
how to get us out of herel”

“Shut up. Pig. Keep talking.
Cage.”

“Venice, that’s so far away now;
no more nights in the wine shop
while Giamba throws his knife to cut
the sausages hanging from the rafters;
those nights where we drank the
wine from the south and the wine
from the north to see which was
sweeter. They are gone. Bruno is
gone. And so is the beautiful lazy-
eyed girl who destroyed it all, Bruno,
me, and the beautiful girl called — ”
“Cagel”

“ — Sapphire!”

“Cage, listen to me!”

“Yeah, you better listen to HawkI”
“Sapphire is gone . . . . ”

“Can you tell us how come these
three coffins can talk to one another?
1 been in one coffin before this one.

CAGE OF BRASS

I cried and screamed and whimpered
like a dog there. But this is the first
one where I ever heard anyone an-
swer. All the answer I got was Pig.
But it was more than before. What
is it, some kind of whispering cham-
ber effect?”

“Why we three can . . . hear?”
“Yeah, can you tell Hawk an’ me
that? I been in two before this one an’
I ain’t never heard no voices.”

“The tri-nexus . . . yes, that must
be it. The prisoners in Brass are
stored in glycerine coffins that feed
and wash them and minister to any
medical needs and keep them from
hurting themselves ... too badly.
You can hurt yourself just to the
point of death, then the coffin knocks
you out with drugs and makes you
get better. You can get out of it to
exercise once a day, in the dark, in
a little stone cubicle — ”

“Yeah, yeah. We know all that.
Cage. But why the parly-parly in
these three coffins?”

“At the tri-nexus — that’s at the
very bottom of the prison, three
chambers come together around the
old drainage pipes. Hollow metal
pipes instead of stone between these
three chambers. A new drainage sys-
tem was put in a hundred and fifty
years ago. If the pipes were filled up
with waste and things, then you
couldn’t hear. But the new system
goes somewhere else. Now that the
pipes are empty, these three coffins
in the lowest level have . . . well,
you can hear . . . through the drains.”
“What about getting out. Mister
Cage? Hawk and me sure would like
to get out of this.”

“Quiet, Pig.”

“. . . the drains ... of the city,
emptying along the canal, into the
water, the bits of paper, the leaves,
the filth of animals and humans float-
ing in the water along the back canals
of the city . . . . ”

“What’s ’a matter with *im.
Hawk?”

“Just listen. Pig.”

“. . , alone, wandering alone in the
back alleys of the city, the sky run-
ning like purple waters between the
narrow rooftops, the water beside me
like black dirty blood, arteries laid
open between crumbling stones. Oh,
it’s a terrible city, beautiful with its
wells and its rusted railings, and its
rickety porches hanging over the
water, its shop windows alive with
the glass of Murano, its children
dark-eyed and dark-haired with skin
like dirty soap, city of beauty, city
of loneliness .... ”

4 4 ^age, we’re alone. Here in Brass,

^ you hear about it all the time,
the prison without guards. It’s all
automatic. All the coffin changing,
the feeding, it all goes on without
guards. Now you say you know how
Brass is laid out. How can we believe
all that?”

“I know. I knew the stones of the
city better than Ruskin, better than
Persey. I knew the crack in the rock
where Napoleon laid his pick to the
Ponte San Marco, and I know the
workings of the locks in the dungeon
by which the Doge could flood the
lower chambers of the prison when
he had to be rid of vast numbers of
political prisoners without question;
I knew the passage by which Titian’s
Ascension of the Virgin was smuggled

from St. Mary’s to the cellar of Di
Trevi the wool merchants, or the
foundations for the gate by which
Marino visited Angiolkia before their
betrothal. I have walked down the
staircase of the palace as had Byron
and Shelley, and like them 1 had
found the secret entrance into the
palazzo Scarlotti where the nightly
debouches are still being carried on
by the decadent sons of the sons of
Fottia, in the mirrored halls, in the
tapestried pavillions. All of the city
was open to me, and I was profound-
ly alone.”

“What’s he talkin’, Hawk?”

“Shhh ”

“And into my aloneness, into the
Venetian evening, came Sapphire.
Hawk, Pig, have you ever seen a
woman?”

“Hey, Hawk, I think he’s outa his
head.”

“Pig, who was the- most beautiful
woman you ever saw?”

“Huh? Well, there was Jody-b, and
when I us’ta bring in my haul back
in the caves of Dusk, she’d laugh and
wollop me and wrestle me for the
best pieces, and the others would stand
around the fire, hoopin’ and holler-
ing, and bettin’ on which of us, she
or me, would win — ”

“I knew a woman in Ruption. She
walked in the burning streets of the
city, and the flames fell back into
the earth around her. Her name was
Lanza, and when she dropped her
fire-colored hair across my face, her
fire-colored mouth on mine — ”
“Neither of you have known Sap-
phire. Neither of you have known a
woman. She was the daughter of an
Ambassador to Earth from the thir-

teenth planet of Sirius. You come
from Krags and Alba? She had sum-
mered on one and wintered on the
other and found them dull, tawdry,
productive of incomparable ennui.
And she had come to Venice. 1 saw
her three times in one afternoon.
Venice is a small city, and if you are
wandering the streets, you will pass
other wanderers many times: first on
the steps of the bridge at Ferovia,
while women with their husbands
carried their baby carriages across
the steps, and lottery venders hurried
by, their sticks streaming with tickets.
Again, at the Rialto, I saw her as
they were closing the stalls along the
bridge, and she stopped to examine
a flask, then replace it and*look over
the balustrade into the water; the
third time, when I dared speak to her,
was on a little back canal, where she
had stopped on the tiny Ponte Diav-
olo, leaning on the rail, while the sun-
set gilded the swell of water that
flapped at the rotten, rusty stones. I
came upon her just as she was offer-
ing a piece of something to one of
the cats. I ran to her, struck her hand
away, and when she drew back,
frightened and surprised, I explained
that the wild cats that roamed the city
were vicious, many of them diseased,
and that with so much fishing in the
city they could fend for themselves.
First she looked offended, then just
annoyed, but at last she laughed and
agreed to go with me when I invited
her back to the university, begged her
to come, explained how much fun
the students were, how delightful the
city could be with good companion-
ship, till at last she smiled and ex-
claimed, “Why, you popr, lonely

CAGE OF BRASS

man. Of course I’ll come with you,**
and she came> while I told her iU
about the prizes I’d won» and the
buildings I’d planned, and the papers
I’d written; and when we reached the
Grand Ca^, I helped her onto the
vapperetto; and as we plowed the
water between the gorgeous facades,
I pointed out to her Ca’doro, the
the Scholas and the great merchant^
palazzos that towered into the evening
behind the colored landing poles,
their reflections shimmering until the
public-boat’s ripples shattered them.
And when we went up to the stu-
dents’ dining room, oh, they were so
friendly with us, and Bruno came all
the way over to invite us to the party
he was giving that night. ‘I coiddn’t
find you earlier or I would have in-
vited you before,’ he explained. And
that night we drank wine and danced
on the balcony, and the breeze lifted
Sapphire’s scarf and hung It over the
moon for a moment so that her face
was in shadow, and I held her hand,
and she smiled in shadow, and below
the water carried flecks of silver down
toward a bridge. And then the scarf
dropped again . . . .”

CCTJTey, Hawk! He’s stopped talk-

AX in’.”

“Cage? Hey, come on, Cage,”

«W-w-why ”

“That’s right. Go on. Cage.”

“Why do . . . men commit crimes?
Your voices in the darkness, why do
men commit crimes in the first
place?”

“I guess I jus’ did it ’cause I was
hungry. It gets cold at Dusk. I got
hungry, and stealin’ was easier than
workin’. Only I got cau^t. Which

would’a been okay, only I got hungry
again an’ stole some more. Bout the
fifth time or so, after I’d beat up on
a couple of patrol men, and two of
them £ed, they just threw their hands
up and threw me down in Brass. You
say why do people — ”

“I say why is this. Cage. The
streets of Ruption are filled with hot
fires and hot men; there is revenge;
there is pride; there is the writhing
hate for the workings of a decadent
world that curses us with morality.
That’s why I ran my gang of marau-
ders and looters through the coffers
of the city, battled the flying patrol-
men from the roofs of the palace,
watching my men fall around me,
laughing as the floodlights swept the
roof and I shook my rist at the sky
that blazed with the fires of their jets
bright as the fires of the streets, fir-
ing back, till I was the only one
left — ”

“No .... Hawk. That’s not it.
Pig. Or perhaps that’s what it is with
some men. But with me it was so
much more, so much more. It was
later in the evening, when again I
went on the balcony, to clear my
head I was light-headed from joy
and wine, and as I gazed on the water,
the lights reeled before me, my knees
gave and I fell with my face pressed
to the cold bars, looking over the
red-tiled roofs of the city, bleached
now by the lowering moon. For a
moment I thought my exaltation was
to be replaced by sickness. I pushed
myself up, turned back to stagger be-
tween the glass doors, with the cur-
tains shaking in the breeze. Wine
bottles had spilled on the rug. Giamba
lay on the couch, his hair awry, his

shirt wet with his own bile. The
plates of hors d’oeuvres were half
empty, and even those that were not
had been used for ash trays. The only
light in the room was from the stub
of a candle in one, still-upright bottle.
The moon reached in white fingers
and brushed away the shadows. I
staggered forward. They were all
gone, I thought at first. Then, in the
doorway of Brimo’s room I saw them.

“Blades of pain shot into my head,
tried to unfix my eyesi I swallowed
what rose in my throat, swallowed
what rose again! Muscles all over my
body began to shake. Then something
came out — I thought it would be
a scream, but it was laughter.

“Bruno raised his face from her
neck, frowned. Then he asked, Wear-
ily, ‘Are you going now — *

“ ‘Oh, yes,’ I told him. *But the two
of you must come with me. The night
is just beginning. Come, come, I ^
show you a really go^ time.’ She
looked at me, as drunk as he was,
and I knew diat for a moment she
did not even remember who I was.
Oh, I was maniacal with my laughter.
1 hustled Bruno, protesting, into his
jacket; and as I wrapped her scarf
again and again about her shoulders,
I suddenly felt her start, pull away
from me, but I pretended not to
notice, chattered on cheerily, and al-
most pushed them out into the hall-
way, where Bruno asked, ‘Now what
party would anybody in Venice in-
vite you to?’ Only I just laughed, and
soon we were out on the little walk-
way beside the canal.

“‘This way! This way,’ and they
followed me down beside the cana-
letti, then out to the Campanile, up

the arch of the Academy Bridge, and
across the broad end of the Strada
Nova, into the tiny alley that has no
name. We crossed another of the
city’s thousand bridges (there aren’t
really a thousand; only six hundred
and eighty-two) and hurried beneath
the covered water-way. It let us out
two small streets from the clutter of
steps rising to the Ferovia side of the
Rialto. But we moved off down to
little blue-tiled walkway, then pushed
throught a gate and hurried down
an alley where the lights were out. I
started to climb the low wall.

44 4TXThere are we ... ’ she be-
VV gan. But Bruno shhhhhed
and laughed. ‘I’ve been a student in
the City almost a year, and I still
don’t know. But Jason knows every
gutter and alley of the plaee. He’s
getting us there by a short cut.* Then
he growled, ‘I hope we get where
you’re going soon.’ But I just hurried
them along. 1 remember she said
once ‘. . . But there’s no rail to the
canal here — * but by then I was work-
ing loose the grate. *In here, in here
. . .’ Again Bruno explained for me,
‘Jason likes to pull surprises on peo-
ple. He’s always crawling up from
somebody’s cellar. Venice is a city of
intrigue, you know . . . .’ But by then,
by then our breaths were echoing in
the dark passage. Our feet splashed,
and she had begun half-crying noises.
But again 1 just urged them on faster.
‘Don’t worry,’ Bruno assured her, but
his voice was almost as unsteady as
hers. ‘Jason doesn’t get all these
prizes each year for nothing. He’s
got an absolute sense of spatiid rela-
tions. He can*t get lost.* We passed

CAGE OF BRASS

under a grating which let half a dozen
blades of moonlight through the fog
and down beside the underground
bridge we were crossing. She caught
her breath. There was no rail here
either. I told them to watch out for
the steps. We left the moonlight, and
in another fifteen minutes we were
there. 1 closed a door behind us and
let out my breath. ‘We’re here,* I
told them. ‘Come on, Bruno, I need
your help.’ I moved along the wall,
the blueprints almost visible before
my eyes. Four steps, five. ‘Duck your
head, Bruno!’ and, ‘Here. Give me
a hand.’ I guided him to the great
bar across the wheel. ‘Now, bear
down on this with me.’ He took the
bar. ‘Will this get us into the party? I
don’t hear any — I stopp^ him.
‘This way to the cellar. Come on,
lean on it.* At first I thought the
ancient lock wouldn’t budge. My toes
came up off the dusty stone. lien I
felt Bruno lend his weight, and — it
gave! Metal ground. I heard the
weights fall. Then a rush of water. I
heard her say, ‘What was that? Bru-
no, Jason?’ And then she let out a
cry. Water splashed about my feet.
‘Hey!’ Bruno said, ‘what’s all this?* I
backed away from the lock, and be-
gan to laugh. “We’re in the dungeon,
the Duke’s dungeon, on the lowest
level, where he had the water locks!
You remember, Bruno? Where he
could open the flood gates to drown
his prisoners?*

“‘Hey, if this is some kind of a
joke, Jason, it’s not funny!’ 1 heard
her s[dashing toward us now, ‘How
do we get out of here? Which way
do we go? It’s all pitch dark.* Then
she cried out and stumbled. Because

the water was rushing so hard now,
it was difficult to stand. It had al-
ready reached our knees. I just started
to back away. They splashed after-
ward. She came near us, then hit her
head on the overhang of stone, fell.
Bruno tried to help her; then, all at
once, he was raging. He dived for
me, caught me. ‘Look, you’re going
to drown too if you think you’re go-
ing to drown us.’ She was splashing
towards us, just screaming. I tried to
pull away, but both of them got me.
We fell in the water. Her scarf, I
remember, was wet between my fin-
gers. I just stayed under, swam down,
which they weren’t expecting and . . .
got away. With the currents, it was
hard to judge the distances accurate-
ly, but I surfaced once more, took
a breath, then dove beneath the low
wall, already under water, clawed my
way under the stone, then at last shot
up to the surface, pulled myself up
the stairs. The water was all the way
up the stairs. I could hear them
screaming behind the rocks. When I
stood, the water was all the way up to
my chest . . . They found me, wan-
dering across the Piazza, in front of
the Byzantine facade of St, Mark’s,
passing through the shadows of the
four great bronze horses thrown from
the basilica’s roof. I was soaking wet,
and was dragging her wet scarf be-
hind me.**

“By all the gods of Krags — ”

“By the single god of Alba — ”

“By whatever gods there are left
on Earth, I tell you I laughed like a
demon. They foimd me. They found
me, and I told them. The alarms had
already gone off. But, by then, it was
too late. The Doges were very effi-

dent. Very . . . because she was the
daughter of an ambassador from an-
other world, it became an interworld
offense. So instead of incarcerating
me in the city, they sent me here,
here to the interworlds prison called
Brass . . .

CCTTey, Hawk, he ain’t talkin’ no
a1 more!”

“Cage? Look, Jason Cage, you say
you know the architecture of Brass
as well as you knew the setup of that
dungeon in . . . what-ever-it’s-name-
was? Come on, now! Talk.”

“I know. I know them all. I know
the floorplan for the Shining Mosque
in Iran. I know the structure of cel-

lars in the Museum of Life at Beta-
Centauri. If Daedalus had ever left
plans for the Labyrinth itself, had I
but seen them once, I would have
needed no thread . . . . ”

“Then what about Brass, Cage?
How about where we are now? Do
you think you could get us out of
here?”

“Here at the . . . tri-nexus? Very
near, there are the . . , yes, the tun-
nels that the original workman used
to enter and leave the structure, when
they built the thing, five hundred
years ago. But . . . but they are
sealed off. Leave, you say? But how
can I leave? I am guilty. My heart
is all crusted with the metal of guilt.

CAGE OF BRASS

I am here ... to suffer. Yes! Even
if I were to leave, guilt is a prison
around my heart.”

“Hey, Hawk, I think he really
gone nuts.”

“Listen, Cage. Where we are, here
at this tri-nexus, is there any way you
know of to get into that tunnel?”
“You . . . you want to get out?
But . . . but ... I killed them. I’m
guilty. I deserve — ”

“Look, Cage!”

“My crimes make all the worlds
guilty.”

“Come on. Mister Cage. We wan-
na get out.”

“Talk, Cage. Talk more.”

“She was . . . she was beautiful as
water, as fire, as fog — ”

“Talk about Brass!”

“Brass? Yes, Brass ... the prison,
the prison with the three chambers
near the workman’s tunnel. The key-
stones, perhaps. Yes, they wouldn’t
be set.”

“What are you talking about.
Cage? Make it so I can see it, clear as
Venice.”

“These three cells we’re in. They
come together around the drainage
system like three fat slices of cake
with their points together. The walls
would be where the knife goes — ”
“And the drain is where you’d put
the candle for a one-year-old’s birth-
day?”

“That’s right. And the stones in
the joining walls, near the tip, they
can’t be mortared in. They weigh
perhaps three hundred pounds
apiece.”

“Three hundred pounds? One per-
son couldn’t move that. Hawk.”

“But two could. Pig.”

“And each covers a drop shaft in-
to the worker’s tunnel that winds and
turns and rises to the rocks out-
side . . . .”

“If you pushed from your side.
Pig, then I pulled from the
other . . . . ”

“What about him?”

“Cage, we can move our stone out,
and then move yours — ”

“No. No, this is where I quit”
“Hawk, the lid is starting to open
for exercise period. Come on, let’s
get that stone.”

“Cage, you won’t be able to move
your stone by yourself. You better
let us help you. Once we go, you’ll
be here forever.”

“No! No ... I belong here. I must
stay here ... I must ... I have to
stay and be part of the great tower
of Brass, like one of its very rocks,
become part of the bedrock itself. I
can hear, you now, hear the stone
scraping against the stone. You grunt.
You pant. But it moves, slowly. Yes,
I hear it moving, like the great lock
in the dungeon of the Doge, scraping,
scraping. There! You’ve got it now
. . . Pig? What tasks of knavery had
you bent those shoulders to on Alba?
Hawk, what did you pit your strength
against to strain such force into being
at Krags? Pig . . .? Hawk . . .?
Hawk . . . . ? Pig — ! I can’t hear
you any more! Have you . . . gone?
Pig? Hawk . . . ?”

Describe the silence inside Brass?
Now it too was complete. Perhaps
you could hint at it by a lack of
words. Perhaps you could hint at it
by saying once the voices left, there
was — nothing.

END

The girls from Capella were

brainy, lovely, man-crazy —
and eight and a half feet tall !

The day Papa came home was the
day my mama came home to me.
That’s the way I looked at Earth’s
first alien contact. We may have
changed some of our ideas about
what’s human, but one thing hasn’t

changed: The big history-tape events
are still just background for the real
I-Me-You drama. Not true? So,
wasn’t the U.S.-Soviet treaty signed
the weekend you caught your first
marlin?

Anyway, there they were, sitting
on Luna. Although it’s not generally

known, there’s been a flap about a
moving source around Pluto the year
before. That’s when C.I.A. decided
that outer space fell under the cate-
gory of foreign territory in its job
description — at least to the extent
of not leaving the U.S. Air Force in
total control of contact with the gal-
axy. So our little shop shared some
of the electronic .excitement. The
Russians helped some; they’re the
acknowledged champs at heaving up
the tonnage, but we still have the
communications lead — we try hard-
er. The British and the Aussies try
too, but we keep hiring their best
men.

That first signal went to nothing
— until one fine April evening all
our communications went snap-
crackle-pop, and the full moon rose
with this big alien hull parked on
the Lunar Alps. Sat there for three
days, glowing bluishly in any six-
power lens — if you could buy one.
And you’ll recall, we had no manned
moon-station then. After peace broke
out, nobody wanted to spend cash on
vacuum and rocks. The shape our
space program was in, we couldn’t
have hit them with a paper-clip in
less than three months.

On A-Day plus one I spotted Tillie
at the water-cooler.

To do so I had to see through two
doors and Mrs. Peabody, my secre-
tary, but I’d got pretty good at this.
I wandered out casually and said:

“How’s George doing?”

She gave me a one-eyed scowl
through her droopy wing of hair,
finished her water, and scowled again
to make sure she wasn’t smiling.

“He came back after midnight.

He’s had six peanut-butter sand-
wiches. I think he’s getting it.”

There are people who’ll tell you
Tillie is an old bag of bones in a
seersucker suit. For sure she has
bones, and she’s no girl. But if you
look twice it can get a little hard to
notice other people in the room. I’d
done the double take about three
years back.

“Meet me at lunch, and I’ll show
you something.”

She nodded moodily and lounged
off. I watched the white knife-scar
ripple elegantly on her tanned legs
and went back through my office,
fighting off the urge to push Mrs.
Peabody’s smile into her Living Bra.

Our office is a Uttle hard to ex-
plain. Everybody knows C.I.A. is out
in that big building at Langley, but
the fact is that when they built it
there it fit about as well as a beagle-
house fits a Great Dane. They got
most of the Dane in somehow, but
we’re one of the paws and tails that
got left out. Strictly a support facility
— James Bond would sneer at us.
We operate as a small advertising
agency in a refined section of D.C.
which happens to be close to a heavy
land transmitter cable and the Naval
Observatory gadgets. Our girls actual-
ly do some ads for other government
agencies — something about Smokey
the Bear and Larry Litterbug is all
over the first floor. We really aren’t
a Big Secret Thing — not a Bfretta
or a cyanide ampoule in the place,
and you can get into our sub-base-
ment any time you produce front and
profile X rays of both your grand-
mothers.

What’s there? Oh, a few linguists

and cold war leftovers like me. A
computer N.S.A. spilled coffee into.
And George. George is our pocket
genius. It is generally believed he got
started making pop movies for yaks
in Outer Mongolia, He lives on
peanut butter and Tillie works for
him.

So, when the aliens started trans-
mitting at us, George was among the
facilities Langley called on to help
decipher. And ^so me, in a small,
passive way — I look at interesting
photography when the big shop wants
a side opinion. Because of my past as
a concocter of fake evidence in the
bad old days. Hate that word fake.
Mine is still being used by historians.

Come lunchtime I went looking for
Tillie at Rapa’s, our local life-
line. Since Big Broker at Langley
found that our boys and girls were
going to Rapa’s instead of eating
G.S.A. boiled cardboard, Rapa’s old
cashier has been replaced by a virgin
with straight seams and a camera in
each, ah, eyeball — but the chow is
still good

Tillie was leaning back relaxed, a
dreamy double-curve smile on her
long mouth. She heard me and wiped
it off. The relaxation was a fake; I
saw her hand go over some shredded
matches. .

She smiled again, like someone
had offered her fifty cents for her
right arm. But she was okay. I knew
her, this was one of her good days.
We ordered veal and pasta, friendly.

“T^e a look,” I invited. “We
finally synched in with their beam
for a few frames.”

The photo showed one side foggy.

the rest pretty clear. Tillie goggled.

. “It’s — it’s — ”

“Yeah, it’s beautiful. She^s beauti-
ful. And the dead spit of you, my
girl.”

“But Max! Are you sure?” Her
using my name was a good sign.

“Absolute. We saw her move. This,
kid, is The Alien. We’ve had every
big cine collection in the world check-
ing. It’s not a retransmission. See that
script on her helmet and that back-
ground panel? Tain’t nobody’s. No
doubt where the send is from, either.
That ship up there is full of people-
type people. At least, women ....
^at’s George got?”

“You’ll see the co-copy,” she said
absently, grooving on the photo. “He
worked out about 200 words in clear.
It’s weird. They want to land — and
something about Mother. Like,
Mother is back, or is home. George
says ‘Mother’ is the best he can do.”

“If that’s Mother, oh my. Here’s
your pasta.”

They landed a week later, after
considerable international wrangling.
At Mexico City, as everyone knows.
A small VTO affair. Thanks to
George’s connections — in the literal
sense — we had it on closed circuit
right over the crowd of world dig-
nitaries and four million real people.

The airlock opened on a world-
wide hush, and Mother came out.
One — and then another — and a
third. Last one out fiddled with
something on her wrist, and the lock
closed. We found out later she was
the navigator.

There they stood on their ramp,
three magnificent earth-type yoimg
females in space-opera uniforms.

THE MOTHER SHIP

Helmets on the backs of their heads
and double-curve grins on tjieir long
mouths. The leader was older and
had more glitter on her crest. She
swung back her droopy wing of hair,
breathed twice, wrinided her nose
and paced down the ramp to meet the
U.N. president.

Then we got it. The U.N. Presi-
dent that year was an Ethiopian about
six feet five. The top of his head
came just to the buckle on her cross-
belt.

I guess the world-wide hush quiver-
ed — it certainly did in George’s
projection room.

“About eight foot three for the
captain,” I said.

“Assuming the top of the head is
normal,” George chirped. That was
what they loved him for.

In the dimness I saw a funny look
on Tillie’s face. Several girls were
suppressing themselves, and Mrs.
Peabody seemed to feel an egg hatch-
ing in her uplift. The men looked like
me — tense. Right then I would have
settled for green octopusses instead of
those three good-looking girls.

The captain stepped back from
President Enkaladugunu and said
something in a warm contralto, and
somehow we all relaxed. She seemed
wholesome, if you can imagine a mix
of Garbo and Moshe Dayan. The
other two officers were clearly very
young, and — well, I told you, they
could have been Tillie’s sisters except
for size.

George got that; I saw his eyes go-
ing between Tillie and the screen.

To his disgust, all the talking was
being done by our people. The three

visitors stood it well, occasionally
giving brief, melodious responses.
They looked mightily relaxed, and
also somewhat puzzled. The two
young J.O.’s were scanning hard at
the crowd, and twice I saw one nudge
the other.

Mercifully a Soviet-U.S.-Indian
power play choked off the oratory,
and got the party adjourned to Mexi-
co’s Guest Palace — or rather, to an
unscheduled pause in the colonnade
while beds were being lashed together
and sofas substituted for chairs. Our
circuit went soft. George shut him-
self up with his tapes of the aliens’
few remarks, and I coped with a
flock of calls about our observing
devices, which got buggered up in the
furniture-moving orgy.

Two days later the party was mov-
ed to the Popo-Hilton with the swim-
ming pool as their private bath.
Every country on earth — even the
Chicoms — sent visiting delegations.
George was going through fits. He
was bound and determined to be the
expert on Mama’s language by re-
mote control. We really had no offi-
cial mission, but I had an in with
the Mexicali bureau, and we did
pretty well imtil about twenty other
outfits got into the act and the elec-
tronic feedback put us all in the
hash.

“Funny thing. Max,” said George
at morning staff. “They keep asking
— I can only interpret as, ‘Where
are the women?”’

“You mean, like women officials?
Women in power jobs?”

“Simpler, I think. Perhaps big
women, like themselves. But I get a
connotation of grown-up, women,

adults. I need more of their talk
among themselves. Max.”

“We’re trying, believe it They keep
flushing all the cans and laughing
like mad, 1 don’t know if it’s our
plumbing or our snoops that amuse
them. Did you hear about Tuesday?”
Tuesday my shivers had come
back. For half an hour every re-
cording device out to a half-mile
perimeter went dead for forty min-
utes, and nothing else was a^ected.

Another department was getting
shivery too. Harry from R & D called
me to see if we could get a better
look at that charm bracelet the nav-
igator had closed the ship with.

“We can’t get so much as a gam-
ma particle into that danm boat,” he
told me. “Touch it — smooth as
glass. Try to move it, blowtorch it,
burrow under it, laser it, bombard it
— nothing. It just sits there. We need
that control. Max.”

“She wears it taking a bath, Hal.
No emissions we can read.”

“I know what I’d do,” he grunted.
“Those cream-heads up there are in
a daze.”

A daze it was. The world at large
loved them. They were now on
a Grand Tour, being plied with enter-
tainment, scenic wonders and tech-
nology. The big girls ate it up —
figuratively and literally. Badloon
glasses of dubrovka went down es-
pecially well from breakfast on, and
they were glowingly complimentary
about everything, from Sun Valley
to the Great Barrier Reef, with stop-
overs at every atomic and space in-

stallation. Captain Garbo-Dayan real-
ly unl^t on the Cote d’Azur, and the
two had lost their puzzled

looks. In fact, they were doing a
good deal of what would have looked
like leering if they didn’t have such
wholesome smiles.

“What the hell?” I asked George.

“They think we’re cute,” he said,
enjoying himself. Did I tell you he
was a tiny little man? That figures,
with Tillie working for him. He loved
to see us big men squinting up at the
Girls from Capella, as the world now
called them.

They were from a system near
Capella, they explained in delightful
fragments of various Earth languages.
Their low voices really had charm.
Why had they come? Well, they were
a tramp freighter, actually, taMng a
load of ore back to Capella. They
had dropped by to clear up an old
chart notation about our system.
What was their home like? Oh, much
like ours. Lots of commerce, trade.
Wars? Not for centuries. Shocking
idea!

What the world wanted to know
most, of course, was where were
their men? Were they alone?

This evoked merry laughter. Of
course they had men, to care for the
ship. They showed us on a video
broadcast from Luna. There were
indeed men, handsome types with
muscles. The chap who did most of
the transmission looked like my idea
of Leif Ericsson. There was no doubt,
however, that Captain Garbo-Dayan
— or Captain Lyampka, as we learn-
ed to call her — was in charge. Well,
we had female Soviet freighter cap-
tains, too.

THE MOTHER SHIP

The one thing we couldn’t get
exactly was the Capellan men’s rela-
tive heights. The scenery on these
transmissions was different. It was
my private opinion, from juggling
some estimates of similar background
items, that at least some of their men
were earth-normal size, though burly.

The really hot questions about their
space drive got gracefully laughed off.
How did the ship run? They were
not technicians! But then they sprang
the bombshell. Why not come and
see for ourselves? Would we care
to send a party up to Luna to look
over the ship? Would we? Would we?
How many? Oh, about fifty — fifty
men, please. And Tillie.

I forgot to mention about Tillie
getting to be their pet. George had
sent her to Sun Valley to record some
speech samples he absolutely had to
have. She was introduced at the pool.
Immediate hit. She looked incredibly
like a half-size Capellan. They loved
it. Laughed almost to guffawing.
When they found she was a crack
linguist they adopted her. George
was in ecstasy with hauls of Capellan
chatter no one else had, and Tillie
seemed to like it. She was different
these days — her eyes shone, and she
had a Idnd of tense, exalted smile.
I knew why, and it bothered me, but
there wasn’t anything I could do.

I cut myself into her report-cir-
cuit one day.

“Tillie. It’s dangerous. You don’t
know them.”

Safe at 2,000 miles, she gave me
the bare-faced stare.

**They*re dangerous?**

I winced and gave it up. Tillie at
fifteen had caught the full treatment

from a street gang. Fought against
knives, left for dead — an old story.
They’d fixed her up as good as new,
except for a few interesting white
hairlines in her tan, and a six-inch
layer of ice between her and every-
body who shaved. It didn’t show,
most of the time. She had a nice
sincere cover manner, and she wore
her old suits and played mousey.
But it was permanent guerrilla war,
inside.

Intelligence had found her, as they
often do, a ready-made weapon. She
was totally loyal, as long as no one
touched her. And she’d wear anything
or nothing on business. I’d seen pho-
tos of Tillie on a job at twenty-five
that you wouldn’t believe. Fantastic
— the subtle sick flavor added, too.

She let people touch her, physical-
ly, I mean, on business. I imagine —
I never asked. And I never asked
what happened to them afterward,
or why the classified medal. It did
trouble me a little when I found out
her chief case officer was dead —
but that was all right, he’d had dia-
betes for years.

But as for letting a friend touch
her — really touch her — I tried it
once.

It was in George’s film-vault. We
were both exhausted after a fifty-
hour run of work. She had lean^
back and smiled, and actually touched
my arm. My arm went around her
automatically and I started to bend
down to her lips. At the last minute
I saw her eyes.

Before 1 got pastured out to
Smokey Bear and George, 1 had
worked around a little, and one of

the souvenirs indelibly printed on my
memory is the look in the eyes of a
man who had just realized that I
stood between hhn and the only exit.
He relaxed for just a second — and
then started for the exit through what
very nearly became my dead body,
in the next few hectic minutes. I
saw that look — depthless, limp, in-
human — in Tihie’s eyes. Gently I
disengaged my arm and stepped back.
She resumed breathing.

I told myself to leave her alone.
It’s an old story. Koestler told it,
and his girl was younger. The trouble
was I liked the woman, and it didn’t
help that she really was beautiful
under those sack suits. We got close
enough a couple of times so we even
discussed — briefly — whether any-
thing could be done. Her view was,
of course, Nada. At least she had the
taste not to suggest being friends.
Just Nada.

After the second of those sessions
I sloped off with a couple of mer-
maids from the Reflecting Pool, who
turned out to have strange china door-
knobs in their apartment. When the
doorknobs got busted I came back
to find Mrs. Peabody had put me on
sick leave.

“I’m sorry, Max.”

**De nada** I told her.

**De nada,** I told her.

And that was how matters stood
when Tillie went off to play with the
alien giantesses.

With Tillie next to them, our shop
became Miss Government Agency of
the moment. The reluctant trickle of
cross-data swelled to a flood. We
found out, for instance, abojit the po-
lice rumors.

It seemed the big girls wanted ex-
ercise, and the first thing they asked
for in any city was the big park.
Since they strolled at eight mph, a
foot guard wasn’t practical. The UN
compromised on a pair of patrol cars
bracketing them on the nearest road.
This seemed to amuse the Capellans,
and every now and then the police
radios went dead. The main danger
to the big girls was from hypothetical
snipers, and nobody could do much
about that.

After they went through Berlin the
Vapos picked up four men in poor
condition in the Tiergarten, and the
one who lived said something about
the Capellans. The Vapos didn’t take
this seriously — all four had vagran-
cy and drug records — but they
bucked it along anyway. Next there
was some story from a fruity type in
Solsdjk Park near The Hague, and
a confused disturbance in Hong Kong
when the Girls went through the
Botanical Gardens. And three more
defunct vagrants in the wilderness
preserve outside Melbourne. The
Capellans found the bodies and ex-
pressed shock. Their men, they said,
did not fight among themselves.

Another tidbit was the Great Body
Hunt. Try as we had in Mexico we
had never got one look at them com-
pletely naked. Breasts, yes — stan-
dard human type, superior grade.
But below the navel we failed. Now
we found out that everybody else all
along the route was failing too, al-
though they’d pushed the perimeter
pretty close. I admired their efforts
— you wouldn’t believe what some
of our pals had gotten pickups into.
But nothing worked. It seemed the

THE MOTHER SHIP

Girls liked privacy, and they had
some sort of routine snooper-swe^
that left blank films and tapes. Once
when the Jap LS. got really tric^
th^ found their gismo with the cir-
cuits not only fused but mirror re-
versed.

TlUie’s penetration evoked a mass
howl for anatomical detail. But
all she gave us was, ^'Conception is
a voluntary function with them.” I
wondered if anyone else around the
office was hearing mice in the wood-
work. Was I the only one who knew
Tillie’s loyalty was under pressures
not listed in standard agent evalua-
tion?

She was helpful on the big ques-
tion: How did they come to be so
human? There was no doubt they
were. Although we hadn’t got pic-
tures, we had enough assorted bio-
logical specimens to know they and
we were one flesh. All the Girls
themselves had told us was interpret-
ed as “We are an older race” — big
smile.

Tillie got us the details that shook
our world. The navigator had too
many balloon-glasses one night and
told Tillie that Capellans had been
here before — long before. Hence
the chart notation they’d wanted to
check. There was something of inter-
est here besides a nice planet —
something the first expedition had
left. A colony? The navigator grinned
and shut up.

This tidbit really put the straw-
berries in the fan. Was it possible we
were the descendants of these people?
Vertigo hit the scientific sector and
started a babble of protest. What

about Proconsul? What about the
australopithecines? What about goril-
la blood-types? What about — about

— about WHAT? The babble mount-
ed; a few cooler heads pointed out
that nobody really knew where Cro-
Magnon came from, and he had ap-
parently interbred with other types.
Well, it’s an old story now, but those
were dizzy days.

True to human form, I was giving
the grand flip-flop of history about
two percent of my attention. To be-
gin with, I was busy. We were fight-
ing out a balanced representation of
earth scientific specialists with all
the other nations who had delega-
tions in the visiting party to Luna.
It WM to be a spectacular talent show

— everything from particle physics,
molecular genetics, math theory, eco-
systems down to a lad from Chile
who combined musical notation ana-
lysis, cosmetology and cooking. And
every one of them handsome and cer-
tified heterosexual. And equipped
with enough circuitry to — well,
assist their unaided powers of obser-
vation. Even in the general euphoric
haze somebody had stayed cool
enough to reali^ the boys just might
not get back. Quite a job to do in
two weeks.

But that again was background to
a purely personal concern. The Mon-
day before the party took off Tillie
and the Girls came through D.C. I
cornered her in the film vault.

“Will you receive a message in a
sanitized container?”

She was picking at a bandaid over
a shot-puncture some idiot had given
her. (What the hell kind of immuni-
zation did the medicos think they had

for assignments on the moon?) One
eye peeked at me. She knew she was
guilty, all

‘*You think your big playmates are
just like yourself, only gloriously im-
mune from rape. I wouldn’t be sur-
prised if you weren’t thinking of
going home with them. Right? No,
don’t tell me, kid, I know you. But
you don’t know them. You think you
do, but you don’t Did you ever meet
any American Negroes who moved
to Kenya? Talk to one some tinie.
And there’s another thing you haven’t
thought about — two hundred and
fifty thousand miles of hard vacuum.
A quarter of a million miles away.
The Marines can’t get you out of
this one, baby.”

“So?”

“All right. I just want to get it
through to you — assuming there is
a human being under that silicon —
that out here is another human being
who’s worried sick about you. Does
that get through? At all?”

She gave me a long look as though
she were trying to mike out a distant
rider on a lonesome plain. Then her
lashes dropped.

The rest of the day I was busy
with our transmitting arrangements
from — actually — Timbuctu. The
Russians had offered to boost the
party up in sections in six weeks,
but Captain Lyampka, after a few
thoughtful compliments, had waved
that off. They would just send down
their cargo lighter — no trouble at
all, if we woidd point out a conven-
ient desert to absorb the blast Hence
Timbuctu, and the Capellan party
was spending the night in D.C. en
route there.

They were lodged in the big hotel
complex near our office and adjoin-
ing Rock Creek Park. That was how
I came to find out what Capellans
did in parks.

It was a damn fool thing, to traE
them. Actually I just hung around
the park input. About two AM I was
sitting on a bench in the moonli^t,
telling myself to give it up. I was
gritty-eyed tired. When I heard them
coming I was too late to take cover.
It was the two J.O.’s, two beautiful
girls in the moonlight. Two hig girls.
Coming up fast. I stood up.

“Good evening!” I essayed in
Capellan.

A ripple of delighted laughter, and
they were towering over me.

Feeling idiotic, I got out my ciga-
rillos and offered them around. The
first mate took one and sat down on
the bench. Her eyes came level with
mine.

I clicked my lighter. She laughed
and laid the cigarillo down. 1 made
a poor job of lifting mine. There
is a primal nightmare lurking deep
in every man. It has to do with his
essentid maleness. With violation
thereof. Most of us go through life
without getting more than a glimpse
of it, but this situation was bringing
black fingers right up into my throat.
I essayed a sort of farewell bow. They
laughed and bowed back. I had a
clear line of exit to right rear. I took
a step backward.

A hand like a log fell on my
shoulders. The navigator leaned
down and said something in a vel-
vety contralto. I didn’t need a trans-
lator — I’d seen enough old flics:

THE MOTHER SHIP

“Don’t go ’way, baby, we won’t
hurt you.”

My jump was fast, but those she-
brutes were faster. The standing one
had my head in a vise at arm’s length,
and when I tried the standard finger-
pull she laughed like a deep bell and
casually broke my arm. In three
places, it turned out later.

The ensuing minutes are what I
make a point of not remembering
except when I forget not to wake
up screaming. My next clear view
was from the ground where I was
discovering some nasty facts about
Capellan physiology through a blaze
of pain. (Ever think about being at-
tacked by a musth vacuum cleaner?)
My own noise was deafening me, but
either I was yelling in two voices or
something else was screeching and
scrabbling around my head. In a dead
place somewhere inside the uproar I
associated this with Tillie, which
didn’t make sense. Presently there
was, blessedly, nothing . . . and some-
where else, ambulance jolts and smells
and needle-jabs.

At some later point in daylight
George’s face appeared around a
mass of tapes and pulleys on a hos-
pital bed.

He told me Tillie had got the cap-
tain to call off her J.O.’s (“Leave
the kid her toy!”) Later she got a
call through to George, and he sent
the special squad to haul the corpse
in to the hidey-hole for Classified
Mistakes. (I was now very Classi-
fied.) While he talked he was setting
up a video so we could watch the
Terran scientific delegation embark
for Luna.

Through the pulleys I saw them

— a terrific-looking group, the cream
of Terran expertise, and most of
them still looking human in spite of
being about thirty per cent hardware.
There were the dress uniforms of
various armed services — the pair
of Danish biologists in naval whites,
and the Scotch radiation lad in dress
kilts were dazzling. Myself, I had
most faith in the Israeli gorilla in
khaki; I had run into him once in
Khartuum when he was taking time
off from being a Nobel runner-up in
laser technology.

The bands played; the African sun
flamed off the gold and polish; the
all-girl Capellan freighter crew lined
up smartly as our lads marched up
the ramp, their heads at Capellan
belly-button level. Going into that
ship with them was enough minia-
turized circuitry to map Luna and do
a content-analysis on the Congress-
ional Library. At the last minute, one
of the Chicoms got the hiccups, and
his teeth transmitted flak all over the
screen. Tillie followed the men, and
behind her came the captain and her
roughnecks, smiling like The Girl
Next Door. I wondered if the navi-
gator was wearing any bandaids. My
teeth had had hold of something —
while they lasted.

There they went, and there they
flaked out, to a man. We next saw
them on a transmission from the
mother ship. There wasn’t a molecule
of metal on them. We found out later
they’d dozed off on the trip up, and
waked up in the ship clean as babies,
with healing scars on their hides.
(The Chicoms had new teeth.) Their
Capellan hosts acted as if it were all
a big joke and served welcome drinks

all around every ten minutes. Some
drinks they must have been — I
caught a shot of my Israeli hope. He
was sitting on the captain’s lap, wear-
ing her helmet. Somebody had had
the sense to rig a monitor on the
satellite relay, so the world at large
saw only part of the send. They
loved it.

“Round one to Mordor,” said
George, perched like a hobbit on my
bed. He had stopped enjoying the sit-
uation.

“When the white man’s ship came
to Hawaii and Tahiti,*’ I croaked
through my squashed l^nx, “they’d
let a herd of vahines on board for
the sailors.”

George looked at me curiously. He
hadn’t had the chance to meet his
nightmare socially, you see. I was
getting friendly with mine, in a grim
way.

“If the girls had a machete or two,
nobody got mad. They just took ’em
away. The technologic^ differential
here is about the same, don’t you
think, George? We’ve just had our
machetes taken away.”

“They left some new diseases, too,
when they moved on,” said George
slowly.

He was with it now.

“// this bunch moves on**

“They have to sell that ore.”

“ — What?” (I had had a glimpse
of Tillie on the screen, standing near
the Capellan male we had been call-
ing Leif Ericsson. As I had figured,
he was about my size.)

“I said they have to get home to
sell their cargo.”

And was he right. The operative
word was cargo.

THE MOTHER SHIP

The plot unfolded about a week
later when the visiting party was
sent back from Luna, along with
three new Capellan ratings who were
to collect the VTO launch. To my
inexpressible relief Tillie came with
them.

The cargo lighter dumped Tillie
and our deflowered male delegation
in North Africa and then took off
on a paraboloid which put the Capel-
lans down partway ’round the globe.

“Scechuan Province, Woomara
says,” George told me. “Doesn’t
smell good.” The Chicoms in those
days were speaking to us, but not
very politely. They did not see fit
to mention to the rest of the world
that the Capellans were paying them
a private visit.

“Where’s TilHe?”

“Being debriefed at the Veddy
Highest Levels. Did you hear the
mother ship unloading its ore?”
“Where would I hear anything?”
I wheezed, rattling my pulleys. “Give
me that photo!”

You could see it clearly: conical
piles and some sort of conveyor run-
ning out from the big hulk on Luna.

“At least they hadn’t got matter
transmitters,” I croaked.

The next piece of the plot came
through Tillie. She sat chin on fist,
talking tiredly through her hair in the
general direction of my kneecaps.

“They estimate they can carry
about 700. It’ll take them three days
our time to unload, and another week
to seal and atmospherize part of the
cargo hold. The Chicoms bought the
deal right off.”

“What’s the difference to them?”
I groaned. “From China the Capellan

brand of slavery probably looks like
cake.”

That was it, of course. The men
of Capella were slaves. And there
were relatively few of them. A cargo
of exotic human males was worth a
good deal more than ore. A hell of
a lot more, it seemed. On Terra we
once called it “Black Ivory.”

So much for Galactic super-civili-
zation. But that wasn’t all 1 had to
scream loud for George before he
showed, looking white around the
nose.

“A merchant privateer who runs
into a rich source of pearls, or slaves,
or whatever,” I wheezed, “doesn’t
figure to quit after one trip. And he
doesn’t want his source to dry up or
run away while he’s gone. Or learn
to fight back. He wants it to stay
sweet, between trips. The good cap-
tain was quite interested in the fact
that the Russians offered to get up
to Luna so quickly. They could ex-
pect us to develop a defensive capa-
bility before they got back. What do
they propose to do about that?”

“This may come as a shock to
you,” George said slowly, “but you
aren’t the only man who’s read his-
tory. We weren’t going to tell you
because there’s nothing you can do
about it, old brother, in that jungle
gym.”

“Go on!”

“Mavrua — that’s the fellow you
called Leif Ericsson — he told me,”
put in Tillie. “They plan to turn off
the sun a little. As they leave.”

“A solar screen.” George’s voice
was gray, too. “They can lay it with
their exhaust in a couple of dozen
orbits. It doesn’t take much, and it

should last, that is, there’s an irrever-
sible interaction, I don’t understand
the physics. Harry gave me the R & D
analysis at lunch, but the waiter kept
taking the mesons away. The point
is, they can screen off enough solar
energy to kick us back to the ice
age in about ninety days. Without
time to prepare we’ll be finished.
Snow should start here about June.
It won’t quit. Or melt. Most of the
big lakes and quite a lot of ocean
will go to ice. The survivors will be
back in caves. Perfect for their pur-
pose. of course — they literally put
us on ice.”

“What the hell is being done?” I
squeaked.

“Not counting the people who are
running around cackling, there are
two general lines. One, hit them with
something before they do it. Two,

undo it afterwards. And a massive
technological research depot is being
shipped to Columbia. So far the word
has been held pretty close. Bound to
leak soon, though.”

“Hit them?” I grated. “Hit them?
The whole U.S.-U.K.-Soviet military
can’t scratch that VTO that’s sitting
in theii;laps! Even if they could get
a warhead on the mother ship, they’re
bound to have shielding. Christ, look
at the routine fields they use to hold
their atomics. And they know the
state of our art. Childish! And as for
undoing the screen in time to save
anything — ”

“What do you think you’re doing?
Max!” They were pawing at me.

“Getting out of here .... God-
damnit, give me a Mfe, I can’t untie
that bastard! Let go! Nurse! WHERE
ARE MY PANTS?”

THE MOTHER SHIP

riey finally hauled me over to
George’s war-room in a kind of
mobile mummy-case and saw 1 got
fed all the info and rumors. I kept
telling my brain to produce. It kept
telling me back Tilt. With the top
men of ten nations working on it,
what did I imagine 7 could contrib-
ute? When I had been grunting to
myself for a couple of hours Tillie
and George filed in with a purpose-
ful air.

“‘In a bad position there is no
good move.’ Bogoljubov. Give over,
Max.’’

“In a bad position you can always
wiggle something** I rasped. “What
about the men, Tillie?”

“What about them?”

“How do they feel about the plan?”
“Well, they don’t like it.”

“In what way don’t they like it?”
“The established harem favorites
don’t like to see new girls brought
in,” she recited and quick looked me
in the eye.

“Having a good time, baby?” I
asked her gently. She looked away.

“Okay. There’s our loose piece.
Now, how do we wiggle it at a quar-
ter of a million miles? . . • • ^at
about that' character Leif — Mav-
rua?” I mused. “Isn’t he some sort of
communications tech?”

“He’s chief commo sergeant,” Til-
lie said, and added slowly, “He’s
alone on duty, sometimes.”

“What’s he like? You were friend-
ly with him?”

“Yes, kind of. He’s — I don’t
know — like queer only not queer.”
I was holding her eye.

“But in this situation your interests
coincide?** I probed her hard, hard.
The American Negro who goes to
Kenya often discovers he is an Amer-
ican first and a Negro second, no
matter what they did to him in Mis-
sissippi. George had the sense to keep
quiet, although I doubt he ever un-
derstood.

She swung back her hair, slowly.
I could see mad dreams dying in her
eyes.

“Yes. They do . . . Coincide.”
“Think you. can talk to him?”
“Yes.”

“I’ll get over to Harry,” George
jumped up, he was ahead of the play
now.” “We’ll see what we can lash
up. Ten days, maximum.”

“Call the campus. I can take a
meeting now. But get me something
so I don’t sound like a frog’s ghost.”
The chief we had then was all
right. He came to me. Of course we
had only the start of a plan, but no-
body else had anything, and we had
Tillie. He agreed we were nuts and
gave us everything we needed. The
lateral channels were laid on by 1500,
and Jodrell Bank was to set us up.

The waning moon came over
Greenwich just before dawn that
week, and we got Tillie through to
Mavrua about midnight He was
alone. It took her about a dozen ex-
changes to work out agreement in
principle. She was good with him. I
was studying him on the monitors;
as Tillie said, queer but not queer.
Cleancut, muscular, good grin; go-
nads okay. Something sapless in the
eyes. What in hell could he do?

The chiefs first thought had been,
of course, sabotage.

“Stupid,” I husked to George.
“Harem slaves don’t blow up the
harem and themselves just to keep
the new girls out. They wait and
poison the new girls when they can
get away with it. That does us no
good.”

“Nor do historical analogies, after
a point.”

“Analogic reasoning works when
you have the right reference frame.
We need a new one. For instance,
look at the way the Capellans over-
turned our psychic scenery, our view
of ourselves as integral to this world
.... Or look at their threat to our
male-dominant structure. Bigger,
more dominant women who treat our
males as sex-slave material. Walking
nightmares . . . notice that *mare?’
.AU ri^t — What is the exact rela-
tionship between the Capellans and
us? Give me that Danish report
again.”

The two gorgeous Danes had at
least gotten some biological in-
formation between orgies. Maybe
they were more used to them. They
confirmed that the Capellans carried
sex-linked differences. Capellan males
matured to parth-normal size and
sexual features, but the adolescent
females went throu^ a secondary
development spurt and emerged as
the giantress we had seen. With the
specialized characteristics that I had
inadvertently become familiar with.
And more: some milennia back a
mutation started cropping up among
the women — fallout from a war,
perhaps? No answer. Whatever the
cause, women began failing to devel-
op. In other words, they stayed as

earth-type normals, able to reproduce
in what the Capellans regarded as
immature form.

Alarmed, the Capellan matriarch-
ate dealt with the problem in a rela-
tively humane way. They rounded up
all suspected mutant lines and de-
ported them to remote planets, of
which Terra was one. Hence the old
chart notation.

Our present visitors had been ore-
hunting at nearly maximum range
when they decided to check on the
semi-mytMcal colony. No one else
ever had.

“What about the Capellan’s own
history?”

“Not much. Look at that British
sheet: ‘We have always been as we
are.* ”

“Isn’t that just what we thought
about ourselves — until they land-
edr

George’s tired eyelids came open
wide.

“Are you thinking what I — ”

“We’ve got Tillie. Mavrua prob-
ably knows enough to bugger their
receiver records. It wouldn’t take
much .... What is to Tillie as a
Capellan is to us?”

“Bobol” put in Mrs. Peabody,
from some ambush.

“Bobo will do nicely,” I went on.
“Now we work up the exact scen-
ery — ”

“^ut, Jesus — talk about forlorn
chances — ” protested George.

“Any chance beats no chance. Be-
sides, it’s a better chance than you
think. Some day I’ll tell you about
irrational sex phobias, Fve had some
unique data. Ri^t now we’ve got to
get this perfect, that’s all. No slips.

THE MOTHER SHIP

You cook it and Fm going to vet
every millimeter of every frame.
Twice,”

But I didn’t My fever went up,
and they put me back in the cooler.
Every now and then Tillie dropped
in to tell me things like the ore-piles
on Luna had quit growing, and the
crew was evidently busy air-sealing
the hold. How was George doing?
Great In my more lucid moments 1
realized George probably didn’t need
any riding — after all, he’d trained
on those Mongolian yak parties.

If this were public history I’d give
you the big drama of those nine days,
the technical problems that got licked,
the human foul-ups that squeaked by.
Like the twenty-four hours in which
the U.S. military was insisting on
monitoring the show through a chan-
nel that would have generated an
echo — their scientists said no, but
the President finally trusted ours and
killed that. Or the uproar when we
found out, about Day Five, that the
French hsid independently come up
with a scheme of their own, and were
trying to talk privately to Mavrua —
at a time when his Capellan chief was
around, too. The President had to
get the U.N. Secretary and the
French Premiere’s mother-in-law to
hold that. That let the cat out of the
first bag; the high-level "push to get
in the act began. And there was the
persistent intrusion from our own
Security side, who wanted to hitch
Mavrua up to some kind of interstel-
lar polygraph to run a check on him.
And the discovery, at the last minute,
of a flaw in our scanning pulse which
would have left a fatal trace, so that
new equipment had to be assembled

and lofted to the satellite relay all
one sleepless night. Oh, there was
drama, dl right. George got quite
familiar with the sight of the Presi-
dent pulling on his pants.

Or I could paint you the horror
visions now growing in all our minds,
of snow that never stopped, of gla-
ciers forming and grinding down
from the poles across the world’s ara-
ble land. Of eight billion people ulti-
mately trying to jam themselves into
the shrinking, foodless equatorial belt
Of how few would survive. A great
and dramatic week in world history
— during which our hero, in actud
fact, was worrying mostly about an
uncontrolled staph colony in his
cracked pelvis and dreaming of drag-
ging seals home to his igloo off Key
West.

“How’re your teeth, baby?” I ask-
ed what seemed to be a soUd version
of Tillie, swimming in the antibiotic
fogs. I had the mad notion that her
head had been resting on my arm
cast.

“Teeth. Like for chewing blubber.
That’s what Eskimo women do.”

She drew back primly, seeing I was
conscious.

“It’s getting out. Max. Some wise
money is starting to slip South.”

“Best stick with me, baby. I have
a complete arctic camping outfit.”

She put her hand on my head then.
Nice hand.

“Sex will get you nowhere,” I told
her. “In times to come it’s the girls
who can chew hides who’ll get the
men,”

She blew smoke in my face and
left.

On Day Six there was a diversion.

The Capellan party who had
landed in China were now partying
around the Pacific on their way to
pick up the VTO launch in Mexico.
Since Authority was still sitting on
all the vital information, the new
batch of Girls from Capella were as
popular as ever with the public. Be-
hind the scenes there was a hot de-
bate in progress about how they
could be used as hostages. To me this
was futile — what could we get but
promises? Meanwhile their launch
was sitting unattended at Mexico
City, showing no signs of the various
cosmic can-openers we had tried.
All the United Powers could do was
to englobe it with guard devices and
a mob of assorted special troops.

On Day Six the three Girls went
fishing off a Hawaiian atoll, in a
catamaran. They were inshore of
their naval escort. One of them
yawned, said something.

At that moment the VTO boat in
Mexico went Whirr, let out a blast
that incinerated a platoon of Marines
and took off. A Jap pilot earned his
family a pension by crashing it at
90,000 feet with his atomic- war-
heads aboard. As far as we could
find out, he never even caused a
course correction.

It came scorching down on the
atoll just as the girls drifted up to the
beach. They sauntered over and were
inside before the naval watchdogs
got their heads out of their radar
hoods. Two minutes later they were
out of atmosphere. So much for the
great hostage plan.

After this I kept dreaming it was
getting colder. On Day Seven I
thought I saw rhododendron leaves
outside my window hanging straight
down, which they do at 46 Fahren-
heit Mrs. Peabody had to come over
to tell me the ship was still on Luna,
and it was 82° outsid^

Day Nine was it. fiiey rolled me
over to George’s projection room for
the show. We had one of the two
slave-screens, the U.N. had the other.
The Chief hadn’t wanted that —
partly from the risk of detection, but
mostly because it was ninety-nine to
one die thing would bomb out. But
too many nations knew we were try-
ing something.

I was late, due to a flat tire on my
motorized coffin. George’s master-
piece was already running when they
wedged me through the doors. In the
dimness I could make out the Chief
up front, with a few cabinet-type
sachems and the President. The rest
seemed to be just two-feather Indians
like me. I guess the President wanted
to be in his own family when it
bombed.

The screen show was pretty im-
pressive. A big Capellan hunched
over her console, sweat streaming
down her face, yelling a low steely
contralto into her mike. I couldn’t
get the words, but I picked up the
repetitive cadence. The screen flick-
ered — George had worked some
authentic interstellar noise into the
send — and then it jumped a bit, like
an early flic, when the ship goes
down with Pearl White lashed to a
bunk. There were intermittent back-
ground crashes, getting louder, and
one cut-off screech.

THE MOTHER SHIP

Then the back wall started to
quake, and the door went out in a
laser flare. Something huge kicked
it all the way down, and Bobo came
in.

Oh my aunt, he was beautiful. Bo-
bo Updyke, the sweetest monster
I’ve known. I heard a chair squeak
beside me, and there he was beam-
ing at his image on the screen. They’d
fixed him up with love. Nothing
crude — just a bit more browridge
on what he had, and the terrible
great paws very clean. The uniform
— a little raw Mau-Mau on a solid
base of mechanized S.S. schrechlich-
heit. Somebody had done something
artfully inhuman about the eyes, too.
For an instant he just stood there.
The crashes quit, like held breath.

There’s rape and rape, you know.
Most rape has some kind of warmth
in it, some kind of acknowledgment
of the victim’s existence. That’s why
most women aren’t really scared of
it. But there’s another kind. The kind
a machine might do, or a golem, or
a torture device. The kind that is
done by a thing to a thing. That’s
what they’d put into Bobo, and that’s
what the Capellan on the screen turn-
ed up her face to look at. All sweet
Auschwitz.

Did I say Bobo is seven feet two
plus his helmet which brushed the
ceiling, and Tillie is not quite five
feet? It was something to see. He put
out one huge hand. (I heard that
footage was reshot twenty-two times.)
His other hand was coming toward
the camera. More backgroimd crash.
The last you saw between Bobo’s on-
coming fingers was her uniform start-

ing to rip and more hulking bodies
beyond ttie open door. Blackness —
a broken shriek and a male, well,
noise. The sound went dead.

Our lights came on. Bobo giggled
faintly. People were getting up. I
saw Tillie before the crowd covered
her. She had some blue gook on her
eyelids, and her hair was combed. I
decided I’d give her a break on the
blubber-chewing.

People moved around, but the ten-
sion didn’t break. There was nothing
to do but wait. In one comer was
Harry with a console. Somebody
brought in coffee; somebody else
brought something in a napkin that
gurgled into the chief’s dixie cups.
There was a little low talk that stop-
ped whenever Harry twitched.

The world knows what happened,
of course. They didn’t even stop for
f their ore. It was 74 minutes later that
Harry’s read-outs began to purr
softly.

Up on Luna, power was being
used to close airlocks, shift busbars.
Generators were running up. The
great sensitive ears yearning at them
from the Bank quivered. At minute
82.5 the dials started to swing. The
big ship was moving. It floated off
its dock in the Alps, drifted briefly
in an expanding orbit, and then Har-
ry’s board went wild as it kicked it-
self outward. Toward Pluto.

“Roughly one hundred and seven-
ty-nine degrees from the direction of
Capella,” said George, as they rolled
me out. “If they took Harry’s advice,
they’re working their way home via
the Magellanic Clouds.”

Next day we got the electronic
snow as they went into space drive.

To leave us, we may hope, for an-
other couple of milleimia.

The official confirmation of their
trajectory came on the day they let
me try walking. (I told you this was
history as I lived it.) I walked out
of the front door, over a chorus of
yelps. TlUie came along to help. We
never did refer to precisely what it
was that made her able to grip my
waist and let me lean on her shoulder.
Or why we were suddenly in Ma-
gnider’s buying steak and stuff to
take to my place. Sbe was distrustful
of my claim to own garlic, and in-
sisted on buying fresh. The closest
we came — then or ever — to an
explanation was over the avocado
counter.

‘‘It’s all relative, isn’t it?” she said
to the avocadoes.

"It is indeed,” I replied.

And really, that was it. If the Capel-
lans could bring us the news that
we were inferior mutations, some-
body could bring them the word that
they were inferior mutations. If they
had women bigger and hairier than
sur men, somebody else could have

men bigger and hairier than they. If
Mama could come back and surprise*^
her runt relations. Papa could appear
and surprise Mama.

— Always provided that you had
a half-pint female who could look and
talk like a Capellan for seven minutes
of tape, and a big guy who could im-
personate a walking nightmare, and
one disaffected alien to juggle fre-
quencies so a transmission from a
nearby planet came through as a send
from home base. And a pop genius
like George to screen the last stand
of the brave Capellan HQ officer,
sticking to her mike to warn all
ships to save themselves from the
horror overwhelming the home planet
.... It had been Harry’s touch to
add that the invaders had long-range
ship detector sweeps out and ordering
all ships to scatter to the ends of the
Galaxy.

So, all things^ being potentially rela-
tive, everybody down to Mrs. Pea-
body got a medal from bringing Papa
home. And my mama came home
with me, although I still don’t know
how she is on chewing blubber.

END

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100 IF

HOUSE OF
ANCESTORS

by GENE WOLFE

The eye of the telescope looked
upward giddy miles to where the
last sphere, its sides pierced with
yawning holes, swayed above the city.
A teacher from Baton Rouge had
paid her quarter, looked, and left,
a moment before. A man from Des

Moines would come soon, but he
would be too late. For a few sec-*
onds a figure stood at one of those
holes; then another who struggled
with him; then both were gone.

The subway rocked and jerked in
the malicious way subways have on
Sunday afternoons, when the rocking

101

and jerking are out of harmony with
the mood of the time and the people
on the trains, people crossing the city
te visit relatives or seek the cool of
the ocean. The motion did not seem
to bother Bonnie, who sat with her
hands upon the purse in her lap with
her arms enclosing protectively and
possessively the scarcely noticeable
swelling.

Bonnie was pregnant. That made
all the difference, as Joe told him-
self. Bonnie was pregnant

She was a tall, rather lanky girl,
colored Scotch-Irish around her red
flushed elbows and hands. She wore
a black maternity skirt with a hole
for the belly in front — it had been
lent her by her brother Chuck’s wife
— and a voluminous blue smock like
the uniform of one of those semi-
public institutions whose inmates are
issued clothing that does not seem
to be a uniform until two of them
are seen together. Joe was Irish-
Italian, darker than she, with big
hands and forearms.

A group of men on the far side
of the car stared for a hioment at
Bonnie, and he glowered at them. He
wanted to ask them what the hell
they thought they were looking at,
but he knew Bonnie would be upset.
He embarrassed her too often any-
way, too often for him to do it
when he could see it coming. Be-
sides, someone might get really tough,
and Bonnie would become fri^ened
for him and cry, sniveling and chok-
ing with shame as she wept because
it had been a crime to cry in Bonnie’s
family. For himself he did not care
if someone did get tough. Not that
he wanted to die.

‘T think it’s the next stop after
this,” Bonnie said above the clatter.
It was the first time she had spoken
since they had boarded the train. Joe
nodded. '

He would be glad to get out. He
had seldom been outside New York
before, and the few occasions when
be had were associated in his mind
with pleasure, with sunny skies and
fragrant winds, those one-day trips on
which someone brought a portable
television so that they would not be
bereft of the familiar computer-writ-
ten jokes, and someone else his
friends and the friends of his friends
so that the reassurance of the crowd
was with them too. He played soft-
ball in the hi^ grass of meadows
and enjoyed it much mcnre than the
semi-pro which had occujned his
weekday evenings since he quit night
school.

“Come on.” Bonnie was puUing
at his shoulder. “This is our stop.
You feel all right? It doesn’t hurt?”

He stood up, his broad body almost
filling the narrow subway aisle, then
waited for her to stand too. The
train bumped to a stop.

At the gate of the fair grounds
Bonnie showed the pass Chuck had
given her, telling the guard a lot
more about Chuck’s job selling for
the plastics company and what his
connection was with the fair than the
guard wanted to know. Joe stood
back away from them, looking up at
the entrance arch with its twenty-
foot letters that read NEW YORK
WORLD’S FAIR ’91. It was big as
hell, but you could see The Thing
on past it, and The Thing made it
seem small.

102

(M course The Thing made every-
thing seem small. He had not been
up there to see, because the elevator
didn’t go that liigh and he was sup-
posed to stay away from steps, but
they said you could even see The
Thing from the roof of the buildings
where he and Bonnie lived, way over
in Yonkers. It was far higher than
the Empire State building.

Finally Bonnie quit talking to the
guard, and he let them through the
gate. “Where’d Chuck say he was
going to meet us?” Joe asked. Even
though he was curious to see the in-
side of The Thing — especially to
see it now, before the public was ad-
mitted, before any of the people they
knew had seen it — he found him-
self hoping Bonnie’s brother would
not be there.

“At Howard Johnson’s right at the
foot of it. They’ve got that opened
up already so the people working
on the pavilions from the different
countries can eat there, and the re-
porters.” He was walking a pace be-
hind her, and Bonnie looking at him
seriously over her shoulder said, “You
didn’t really want to come, did you,
Joe?”

“Sure I did. I was going crazy
sitting around the apartment all day.”

Bonnie pursed her lips, turning to
look up at him and seeming to un-
derstand everything with her blue
eyes. “I know you were. But you feel
bad about Chuck. Envious.”

He said, “No.” But it was true.

She waited for him to catch up
to her and took his hand. “I just
want to tell you that I’m not mad
because of it. Chuck isn’t either. We
understand.”

Joe said nothing after that, just
looking up at The Thing as they
walked along. Thousands upon thou-
sands of colored balls linked to-
gether with slender looking tubu-
lar stems he knew were really big
enough to hold moving belts that
would carry sightseers from ball to
ball. Although there was no wind
down here on the ground it was
blowing hard high up. You could
see the top of The Thing lean
away from the wind. The engineers
said (Joe had read it in Time)
that even a hurricane couldn’t knock
it down, but it looked as though it
were about to go as he watched. He
wondered what it would be like to be
up in it with the wind blowing
it like that.

Chuck was waiting for them it
front of Howard Johnson’s
jingling the change in his pocket as
he stood there, the way he always
did. Chuck was ten years older than
Bonnie. He had been selling those
plastics ever since he got out of
school. Two years ago, when the fair
was just in the planning stage, he
had landed the contract for the stuff
that went into The Thing, and since
then he had it knocked. The com-
missions were making him rich; you
could see it and not just from the
clothes he wore. It was in the way
he stood, and the way he wore his
hat. That was a hat that said: I’ve
got it made. I’m big time, and you’d
better believe it.

Chuck grinned big at him and
shook his hand with his own soft one
in that up-and-down way he had un-
til Joe mashed it a little to see him

HOUSE OF ANCESTORS

103

wince. Joe’s own hands had been
getting soft during the months since
the accident, but there were still
firm and not flabby like Chuck’s.
He swore to himself he’d never let
them get that way, either; he’d find
something he could do, even if it was
only wood carving or something silly
like that.

“Come on in,” Chuck said when
Joe had let go of his hand. “Ed Bak-
er — he’s the guy I told you about,
the chief engineer — is waiting in
there already. I just stepped outside
to look for you.”

The engineer rose when Bonnie
came to the table. He was a tall,
man, thin as a rake, with a sharp
“V” of hair beginning to gray at the
sides. Chuck introduced both of
them, Bonnie first, and beckoned to
one of the uniformed girls who were
waiting on the tables.

“Chuck here says you people’d
like to see the inside of The Thing.”
Baker had a noticeable New Engird
twang. “And if you would, now’s the
time to do it They’ve sold tickets for
six months in advance already.”

“Is it finished?” Bonnie asked
timidly.

Chuck lauded. “Not quite inside,
sir. But it won’t come down with you
in it, if that’s what you mean. Fin-
ishing up the displays is Ed’s job,
though. And believe me, he can
make the ones that aren’t complete
more interesting than the stuff near
the bottom that’s ready to rolL”

“There aren’t any steps, are
there?’* Bonnie looked at Joe, and he
wanted to sink into the floor. He
knew what was coming.

Baker shook his head. “All the

rises are by belt Does your husband
have a heart condition? Chuck men-
tioned something.”

Bonnie’s brother held his fingers
an impossible distance apart. “He’s
got a nail in his heart this big. A
great big galvanized nait”

Baker’s eyebrows went up, and Joe
said quickly, “It’s only five-
eighths of an inch long, really. From
a spiking gun — one of those tools
that shoot a shell like a .22 so that
you can nail furring strips onto con-
crete.”

“But it’s in your heart?” the en-
gineer was h^f astonished, half
skepticaL

“In one of the chambers. The doc-
tor told me the name of it, but I
forget now.”

“My God, what happened?”

“You know how you got to push
the barrel against someth^ and pull
the trigger at the same time to make
it go off?”

Baker nodded. “I’ve used them;
they’re practically foolproof.”

“Yeah. Well, this guy at work was
fooling around with one. I guess he
must have had his finger on the trig-
ger, and he bumped the end against
a steel / beam.”

Chuck broke in: “It wasn’t square
against it, you see, Ed. Kind of at
a slant So the spike caromed off the
beam and hit Joe. The doctor told
Bonnie it happens with bullets once
in a while, especially small ones like
maybe buckshot. They can go right
through the wall of a man’s heart —
just puncture it — and stay there.
But without killing him. The heart
heals up behind them.”

104

Baker picked up one of the cups
of coffee the waitress was handing
around, and although his hand was
steady Joe could see that he was
shaken. “They can’t get it out?”

“He won’t let them,” Bonnie said.
“I’ve begged him.”

“Listen,” Joe told them, “I don’t
like to go over all this again. Let me
say my piece now, and then l^t’s shut
up about it and talk about The Thing.
That’s what we came here for.”

“You don’t have to — ” Baker
began, but Joe interrupted him with
a gesture.

“Like I’ve explained to Bonnie a
thousand times — ” he was address-
ing the engineer alone now — *1
haven’t got a lot of life insurance,
just what the union gives everybody.
And if they take it out it’ll have to
be what they call open heart surgery,
where the chances aren’t so good.
This way, as long as I’m alive I
draw workman’s compensation, and
medical benefits and all that kind of
stuff. If I drop over some day Bon-
nie’ll get the insurance anyway, so
then she won’t be no worse off. Now
tell us about The Thing, huh?
What’s it supposed to be, anyway?”
“Oh, you know.” Bonnie seemed to
be as relieved as he was at the
change of the subject. “You read to
me about it out of the paper.”
“Sure,” Joe said, “but I want to
hear from an expert. The papers al-
ways get something wrong. What is
it, Mr. Baker?”

“You’d need a biochemist to real-
ly tell you. I can only repeat the
same things you’ve already read; that
it’s actually a giant model of a mole-
cule of deoxyribonucleic acid — what

we call DNA for short. It’s the stuff
genes are made of, so in the funda-
mental sense it’s what determines that
each of us has the heredity he has.”
Bonnie asked, “And it looks like
that?” She was staring but the win-
dow toward the base of The Thing.

“Somewhat like that. We’ve fol-
lowed the normal conventions for
making a molecular model, of course.
Those balls, as the public calls them,
represent atoms in the model, al-
though each one is actually a hollow
sphere thirty yards in diameter. The
black ones are carbon, the light blue
ones oxygen, and so on.”

The engineer’s interest in his work
was infectious. Joe asked, “But it
really does have that crazy shape?
All the DNA in the world?”

Chuck snorted. “If all the DNA
had the same shape, everybody’d be
the same, Joe. Ed, you’ve got to ex-
cuse him; Joe’s not too technically
oriented.”

44Tt does all have that general dou-
X ble helix construction,” Baker
said stiffly, “and it’s incorrect to
think that a single molecule of DNA
like the one we’ve modeled here de-
termines its owner’s complete heredi-
ty. It takes the entire set of human
chromosomes to do that. The DNA
molecule only determines the makeup
of a single type of cell, although even
so its structure seems to be minutely
different for each person. Only iden-
tical twins can readily accept tissue
grafts from one another, so one in-
dividual’s cells must be subtly differ-
ent from another’s — even though
the grafts are from corresponding
parts of the body, liver tissue.

HOUSE OF ANCESTORS

105

“Well, what kind af a cell would
this make?” Bonnie asked. “And who
is it from?” ^

Baker shrugged. ‘This is just a
typical human DNA molecide, as
far as I know. I’m only an electrical
engineer and Tm not sure even a
Ph.D. Wochemist could tell you what
sort of a cell would contain it from
looking at it.”

“It could be a brain cell,” Joe said
unexpectedly, and the other three
stared at him.

“It could be,” Baker agreed after
a moment’s pause. “It would be
strange, wouldn’t it, if there actually
were someone who had that exact
pattern.”

Chuck said airily, “The odds are
probably a million to one against it.”
“I know, but suppose someone
did.” Baker seemed to be talking
half to himself. “Would the molecule
itself recognize its own structure the
way that a set of cell transducers
read the history of gene structure?
There must be a logic to the geometry
we are completely incapable of rec-
ognizing; but it is the logic that makes
all life possible, and the human race
only stays alive because it’s capable
of duplicating itself endlessly — ”
‘Tell them how big The Thing is,
really,” Chuck demanded. “Three
hundred thousand million to one,
that’s the scale this thing here is
built to, Bonnie. It’s the biggest model
of an3rthing ever built, and the tallest
building in the world at the same
time. And do you know what it is
that makes something like this pos-
sible?”

“Yes,” Joe said. “Glass fibers.”
Chuck was only slightly crestfall-

en. “That’s right, what we call mon-
omolecular strands. They’re only one
molecule thick, stronger than hell»
and we embed them in high strength
resin — really key them in. Every one
of those balls was made out of two
bowls from the same mold, fitted to-
gether, and the tubes that connect
them were extruded and cut off to
length. After that all they had to do
was hang them up there after they’d
installed the partition floors that cut
the top half of the ball that you see
off from the bottom half where the
machinery is.”

Baker seemed embarrassed by
Chuck’s exuberance, but he nodded
verification. “We didn’t even use a
scaffold. Just picked up the pieces
with helicopters and fitted them into
place. I suppose you saw it on tele-
vision.”

“And you’ve got displays inside all
of them?” Bonnie asked. “That’s
what I want to hear about.”

The engineer smiled. “Fm glad you
do, because it’s the displays and the
analytical circuits, not the structure,
that are really my responsibility. The
civil engineering boys have done
their job and left. They only come
back to read their strain gauges ev-
ery once in a while.”

Joe scarcely listened while Baker
explained the displays. His attention
was somewhat in his chest, in the area
just beneath his breastbone, where a
strange tightness had gripped him. He
remembered the X-rays he had been
shown; the spike moving, tumbling in
the current of his blood, with each
beat of his heart. The doctors had
said that if it lodged in a valve. . . .

“Come on.”

106

Suddenly they were all standing
up> pushing back their chairs and
setting down their coffee cups. He
rose too» feeling a little confused.
There was no point in making a .fuss;
he would simply have to go on be-
having normally until he fell over on
his face, if that were what he was go-
ing to do. . . .

Outside the engineer led them to
the foot of The Thing.

Joe stood a little behind the others,
his head thrown back to stare
up at the dizzily swaying top thou-
sands of feet above him. A droning
little business jet of an airplane went
past. It was only a tiny silver cross
against the sky, but the lacework of
The Thing towered over it like a
thunderhead. With dizzied eyes he
tried to follow the complexities of the
spiraling pattern, becoming more cer-
tain as he did that some secret of
colossal importance was contained
in it.

Bonnie was touching his elbow; he
looked down at her at last, the earth
rocking under his feet. “What’s the
matter?” he asked. The entrance to
The Thing was still shut.

“Something’s wrong with the door.
Mr. Baker’s key won’t make it work.”
Baker said, “Come along, and we’ll
go to the shop and get someone who
can open this up for us. It’s at the
back of the grounds.”

Joe took a step forward as Bon-
nie released his elbow, then stopped,
afraid he was going to lose his bal-
ance. The vertigo which had seized
him while he was staring upward re-
quired a few seconds to subside. Bon-
nie and Chuck were leaving him.

trailing after Baker. None of them
looked back to see if he were coming
too.

Half in anger, half to have some-
thing against which to steady himself,
he went over to the big door instead
of following them. It was massive,
impressive and somber. He grasped
the handle and pulled back.

He was a big man, owning the
strength that comes of hard physical
work done every day, and the acci-
dent had done nothing to change that.
The door gave almost imperceptibly.
He pulled harder, throwing his weight
backwards. The door rasped a quarter
inch more, then suddenly gave free.
“Stuck,** he muttered to himself.

He looked at his wife’s back; she
was almost out of shouting distance
now. For half a second he thought
of hurrying after her, then decided
against it. Let them all walk to wher-
ever it was they were going, and
back. He would make his own in-
spection of The Thing — the lower
levels at least — and be ready to
laugh at them when they returned.

The base chamber was dark until
he entered it. Then the lights
came up slowly like the illumination
in a theater. No doubt in coming
through the doorway he had stepped
on a pressure-sensitive plate or inter-
rupted a photocell beam. A man in a
white laboratory smock stepped for-
ward smiling a greeting, and it was
an instant before Joe realized that
the man was an automaton activated,
like the lights, by his entry.

“Good day, sir,” the robot began.
“Are you interested in a guided tour
of the exhibit in this atom?”

HOUSE OF ANCESTORS

107

“Sure. That’s what 1 came for.” It
was amusing to address the mechan-
ical toy as though it were in fact a
human being.

“I will be delighted to show you
around. I will form my next tour in
two minutes.”

“Why can’t we start now?”

The robot shook his head regret-
fully. “My programming requires a
two-minute wait for others who
might wish to join us.”

“Okay.” Joe shrugged, grinning.
“You don’t mind if I look around a
little on my own while you’re wait-
ing, do you? Nobody’s really going to
come anyway, you know.”

“There is always that possibility,”
the mechanical guide admitted diplo-
matically. “In the meantime you have
the freedom of the exhibit.”

Joe left him standing, still smiling,
by the entrance — apparently ob-
livious to the fact that Joe had closed
it behind him.

Most of the material on display
in this chamber of The Thing was in
the form of 3D projections — ob-
jects solid and real to the eye but in-
substantial. Mutated fruit flies, mag-
nified a hundred times, crawled about
a section of the floor. He found him-
self wanting to kick them away when
they approached his legs and he went
past them without bothering to read
the printed explanations of their gro-
tesque abnormalities that floated in
the air above them.

Beyond the fruit flies an experi-
ment still more bizarre claimed his
attention. An egg, palely translucent,
stood upright on its large end. The
small end was two feet higher than
his head, and the yolk could be seen

through the shell — a golden gjobe
showing a single dark speck. As he
watched the speck grew, developed
a head, wings and legs. It seemed to
writhe with the energy of its thrust
toward being. Behind him the robot
said, “My tour is ready to form,
sir. Would you care to go back to
the flies, or shall we begin here?”

Joe said a little sarcastically,
“Where’s all the other people on this
tour?”

“There are no others,” the robot
replied in an unruffled voice. “If you
are expecting friends or members of
your family to join you I will be
happy to wait until they arrive.”

“They won’t be along for a while
yet,” Joe told him. “I think I’ll go
ahead without them.” He was still
staring at the growing chick, now
nearly ready to burst from its shell.

iC'^his display,” the robot said
JL chattily, “shows a White Leg-
horn egg in incubation; the unfolding
of the miracle of life. It is designed
to illustrate the sequence of altera-
tions every embryo undergoes be-
fore the final form is realized. The
old naturalists used to say that every
creature had to climb its own family
tree to qualify for the privilege of
birth, and although we are no longer
accustomed to employ such quaint
phrases the old tag illuminates a
truth.”

The chick was scratching weakly at
the shell with its egg tooth. Joe took
his eyes from it long enough to glance
at the guide. “What do you mean,
climb his family tree?**

“He goes briefly through the forms
of each of his forebears — ”

108

“His father was a chicken, wasn’t
he? And he’s a chicken too. How
could you tell whether he looks like
his father or not?’’

“That’s not what is meant — ”
the robot began.

“I know darn well it’s not what
you meant,” Joe told him irritably.
“You meant this chicken here goes
up through evolution from just one
little blob like a germ. So why
couldn’t you say so instead of all that
junk about family trees? If that was
true it would mean everybody has
their father and grandfather and all
that inside them. You know what the
trouble with you and all those smart
guys that set you up is? You think
that anybody that went to college is
so stupid they’ve got to have every-
thing explained to them like a little
kid.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the robot said.
“But it is interesting to consider that
since each of us receives half his
genetic structure from each par-
ent — ”

“Oh, shut up.”

The chick had broken the shell
now and was struggling through the
hole it had created. The robot re-
mained obediently silent, and for a
few seconds Joe watched it without
speaking. Then he asked abruptly,
“Where’s the horn on its legs?”
“Sir?”

“I said, where’s the horn on its
legs. You said it was a Leghorn
chicken and I’ll bet you don’t know
why it’s called that.”

There was a barely perceptible hes-
itation before the robot replied, “No,
I don’t sir. 1 fmd the information is
not in my memory banks. Please rest

assured that your question had been
recorded, and that the answer will be
supplied to my program as part of
the next reprogramming session.”

“I can tell you right now,” Joe
said sourly. “Leghorn’s a place in It-
aly. That’s where they got this kind
of chicken from.”

The chick, its magnified image as
tall as an ostrich, was struggling to
its feet. The robot said nothing.

“Here’s some more for you, smart
guy. Who was the King of the Cow-
boys on the (Ad TV movies, huh?
And what year was it the Mets iRrst
won the pennant? Where was Grand
Central before they tore it down?”
The robot hesitated again, then
said, “I’m afraid the answers to none
of your questions are in my memory
baiis, sir. Would you like to sec the
other exhibits in this atom?”

Joe was walking away, “No.”

“In that case, sir, the entrance to
the pedestrian conveyor which will
take you to the next atom on the
regular tour is on your right. If you
wish to leave the complex entirely,
you may use the door by which you
entered.”

“Does the next place have an-
other dummy like you in it?”

“Oh, no, sir. Each atom has a
completely different guide.”

Not certain why he did it, Joe
turned to his right and stepped onto
the silently moving belt.

The upward angle was even steep-
er than he had expected, but
the surface of the belt was ribbed
with ridges almost like steps. The

HOUSE OF ANCESTORS

109

lights of the chamber behind him
faded until he was left in near dark-
ness. It reminded him of the Tunnel
of Love at Coney Island, where he
had gone once with Bonnie before
they were married. Her perfume had
seemed intensified in the dark until
it was all around him, and in the
boat ahead another couple, a boy
rad a girl he had not noticed particu-
larly when they had gotten in, had
made little animal sounds like chip-
munks mating. Nothing had mattered
then. Both Bonnie and he had be-
lieved that in spite of everything he
would be a success. He would go to
night school, take a Saturday job. • . .
And nothing, nothing at all, had
worked out as they had planned.

Ahead of him light grew; not
merely because he was approaching
it, but as in the chamber below be-
cause the voltage was being turned
on gradually. He could make out the
displays in the area immediately in
front of the end of the connecting
tube now, and a flicker of motion be-
yond them. He stepped off the belt.

An elderly man came forward to
greet him. He wore a black cassock
and a Roman collar. **Good morn-
ing, sir,” the new guide said in a
gentle, slightly accented voice. *T am
Father Gregor Mendel. Good morn-
ing, madam.”

With a start Joe turned to look
behind him at the person the cyber-
naut “priest” was addressing. A
young woman, almost a girl, was
stepping from the belt. “Hello,” (she
had a soft voice that was somehow
familiar,) “do you mind if I join
your tour?”

Joe shook his head, then remem-

bering his manners said, “No, not at
all.” He was looking at the girl’s
clothing: a skirt fully eight inches
shorter than was currently fashion-
able, and a blouse fantastically pat-
terned with interlaced squares.
“Where did you come from?” he
asked.

The girl smiled, brushing back her
long, straight hair. “I came in with
you, actually. When you opened the
door.”

“I didn’t see you.” After a mo-
ment he realized how hostile the flat
statement sounded and added, “I
mean, I’m surprised I didn’t notice
you down below.”

“I kept in the background. Fm
afraid that’s rather a fault of mine.”
The figure of Mendel made a little
gesture of welcome. “This is nice,
very nice. The two of you will make
an ideal party to tour my little ex-
hibit”

“Wasn’t there somebody here be-
fore us?” Joe asked. “I thought
I saw him go out the exit over there
just as we came in.”

Mendel nodded. “There was, my
son. But he did not stay. I didn’t
even have time to speak to him.”
Puzzled, Joe said, “I don’t see how
he could of gotten in ahead of me.”

The girl tossed her head. “It
doesn’t matter, does it?”

“I guess not.”

She smiled suddenly. “Do you
know that the only one who’s for-
mally introduced himself here is Fa-
ther Mendel? i^though I know your
name’s Joe — let’s say I overheard
some people talking to you in How-
ard Johnson’s.”

110

He told her his full name, adding
unnecessarily, "Tm married.”

‘Tm not,” the girl said, “but I’m
engaged.” She held up her left hand
so that he could see the ring she wore.
“My name’s Mary Hogan.”

He felt an unexpected warmth to-
ward her. “That’s my mother’s maid-
en nan^ There’s a coincidence.”
“That’s nothing.” She was grinning
now. “You have the same last name
as the boy I’m engaged to.”

Mendel cleared his throat. “I’m
afraid my atom is one of the dullest,
but are you ready to see it now, my
children?”

“What’s it about?” the girl in-
quired.

“My discovery of genetics. I used
garden peas, you know, and all my
experiments are condensed here for
you. The idea of the designers, I sup-
pose, is to teach the principles in the
same way in which there were origi-
nally discovered. I hope it is a good
one.”

To please the girl Joe followed the
monk-scientist from display to dis-
play, looking at tall and short pea
plants and genetic charts which ap-
peared in glowing lines in the air;
but he could not fix his attention on
the exhibits or Mendel’s rambling,
accented lecture. The brief glimpse
he had gotten of the man who had
fled the exhibit just as he entered ex-
erted a hypnotic attraction on his
mind so that he found himself recre-
ating that flicker of furtive motion
over and over again in his imagina-
tion while Mendel droned on.

At last it was over, and the dimin-
utive priest-robot made a little bow to
them, then stood, smiling shyly.

“That was wonderful,” the girl
said. “A wonderful discovery.”

“He didn’t do it,” Joe told her*
and hated himself for saying it as
soon as he saw the hurt in her face.

“I know I didn’t,” the robot ad-
mitted in its gentle voice, “but can’t
you think of me as a sort of actor?”

“I suppose so,” Joe mumbled.

“I look much as the real Mendel
did, and insofar as is pos^My my
logic pattern has been shap^ to
di^licate his as revealed in his works.
Although I admit we can’t hope for
the accuracy obtainable when the ge-
netic pattern of one of the subject’s
descendants is available for study.
Thus far you two are the only audi-
ence to whom I have lectured. But 1
felt as proud, when I was talking to
you a moment ago, as I would ^ve
if the work Mendel did was really my
own.”

The girl whispered in Joe’s ear,
“Ask his blessing — it will make him
feel better.”

Before he was fully aware of what
he was doing he had dropped to his
knees. He heard himself mumble,
“Bless me. Father.”

An expression of bewilderment
passed over Mendel’s face. “Are
you Catholic, my son?” he asked.

“Does that matter? Couldn’t you
give me your blessing anyway?”

“I suppose it doesn’t really,” Men-
del said, “and no, I couldn’t.” He
reached down and drew Joe to his
feet again. “This is like the story,” he
continued in his mild voice, “they
used to tell about one of the Emperor
Franz Josefs visits to Baden. They
were going to perform one of theop-

HOUSE OF ANCESTORS

111

eras based on Goethe’s Faust for
hiiD, and when one of the emperor’s
courtiers brought his little daughter
behind the scenes in the theater she
saw an actor dressed as the pope and
asked for his blessing.”

Mary Hogan asked curiously,
“And did he bless her?”

Mendel shook his head. “He ex-
plained that he was only a make-be-
lieve pope, and when she understood
she said, ‘Then bless my doll.* Just so,
I cannot bless this young man, my
daughter, but I will bless you.” His
fingers sketched a cross in the air, and
he murmured a latin phrase. The girl
knelt.

When it was over the two of them
stepped onto the belt that would take
them to the next hemispherical room,
and the darkness of the tube closed
around them. “Why would he bless
you,” Joe asked “and not me?”
“Maybe you were too sincere about
it.” He felt the girl’s fingers touch his
hand. ”It was sweet though.”

He could sense her beside him in
the blackness; and unexpectedly,
overwhelmingly, the certainty came to
him that they had waited together
like this before, that the sensation
he now felt was familiar through
countless repetitions. He tried to re-
call when this might have been and
if he had not perhaps known this ^1
before he had met Bonnie, or before
they had married and he had cut off
his contacts with other women. But
no memory of her came, and he
found his recollection forced back-
ward instead to a place he had nearly
forgotten: the tenement apartment in
which he lived with his parents
when he was very small.

There had been only one bedroom,
with the double bed on one side and
his own with the high wooden rail-
ings on the other. An electric fflgn
outside the window flashed blue, then
yellow, blue, then yellow, then went
dark. Now in the darkness he found
himself waiting for the blue flash
again, and the bright spark when his
mother drew on her cigarette, just as
he had on nights when he would
awaken to see her waiting for his
father to return home.

Instead white light gleamed in
front of them, the lights of the next
chamber springing into life. won-
der what this one will be,” the girl
said, but he did not answer her. He
was looking for the man he had
glimpsed in the chamber below, some-
how certain that he would be here
too.

He was, but he remained hidden
until they were almost ready to get
off the belt.

Perhaps because it was so crowded
this exhibit seemed smaller than
the others. Poultry cackled and
quacked around the attenuated legs of
a giraffe. Huge beetles climbed the
walls and, slipping, fell back to the
floor to wiggle and struggle before
they could turn themselves over and
climb again.

Then, on the far side of the
chamber, peering from behind a huge
Empire wardrobe of oiled walnut
which stood in Napoleonic grandeur
among the animals, Joe saw the man’s
eyes. For an instant they stared at
him. He received an impression of

112

malice unfathomable. Then they were
gone. A hunched, hurrying figure
scuttled like one of the beetles, dart-
ing from behind the wardrobe and
disappearing into the darkness of the
next exit.

He yelled and jumped from the
end of the steeply rising belt, wading
through the insubstantial animals that
surged about his feet; but as he
reached the middle of the room the
doors of the wardrobe flew apart
like the doors of some Christmas toy,
and a man with bandaged eyes step-
ped directly into his path. They col-
lided and went crashing to the resili-
ent plastic floor.

By the time he got to his feet
again he knew it was too late. With
the girl’s help he pulled the robot
erect, wondering all the while, rather
vaguely as he mi^t have wondered
about some back page story in a
newspaper, whether or not the exer-
tion he had Just undergone would
kill him. He could feel the thumping
of his heart as clubbed blows from
inside his chest.

**Bon soir,** the blind robot said.
“I am Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine
De Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck.”
He made a courtly bow.

“What happened to you?” the girl
asked suddenly. She pointed, and Joe
saw that Lamarck’s right hand was
missing. It seemed to have been tom
or hacked away; the plastisol flesh
was ragged around the amputation,
and color-coded wires, blue and yel-
low, dangled from the stump.

‘T fear. Mademoiselle,” Lamarck
murmured, “that there may be a van-
dal in our complex.” He seemed
ashamed of the injury that so clearly

revealed his nature, and thrust the in-
jured limb behind him.

“Yes, and I almost caught him,”
Joe said. “If you hadn’t jumped out
of that big cabinet when you did I
would have. What were you doing in
there anyway?”

*Tt is a service closet,” Lamarck
explained. “Each atom has one,
equipped to perform routine mainten-
ance on the guide assigned to it and
to make minor repairs. When the
vandal released me I went in hoping
to have something done about my
hand; when I heard the three of you
coming, however, I felt that since I
retained sufficient functioning to per-
form my office 1 should do so.” A tall
wading bird, insubstantial as mist,
flew through his body as he spoke,
its stilt legs trailing behind it.

44/^hree of us?” Startled, Joe
jL glanced back at the tube from
which he and Mary Hogan had en-
tered. A second girl was standing near
the end of the belt She was taller
than Mary, but seemed even young-
er, coltishly unsure of herself. Like
Mary’s, her skirt ended well above
her knees; but short blonde hair
peeped from under her close fitting
hat, and she carried a beaded hand-
bag with a long strap. Looking at
the three of them she swung it nerv-
ously.

“Come on,” Mary gestured to her.
“Join the freakout We won’t put you
down.”

*T overheard you talking about
someone disp^ging something in
here.” The new glrfe voice was sKrill
and self-conscious. “And I just want-
ed to tell you it was not me.”

114

“We know who it was,” Joe said
gruffly. “It's a man, and he’s ahead
of us, not behind us. I’m not going
to stay here and look at the exhibits.
I’m going on ahead and try to get
him.” The resolve had formed in his
mind, so it seemed to him, as he
spoke; but once formed and articu-
lated he felt that it had the force of
divine law. In his imagination he saw
himself dying, the spike jamming his
heart action at the very moment the
scuttling man he had seen come from
behind in Lamarck’s cabinet sprang
some simple, horrible, trap that would
leave his body mangled — and he did
not care.

“Wait!” the blind robot grasped
him by the arm with his one hand.
“If you don’t see the things here —
if you don’t listen to what I must
tell you about them — you will miss
the point of all of it.”

‘T think he should go.” The voice
was the girl’s, shrill and insistent.

‘1 think he should too,” Mary Ho-
gan said. “There’s no' telling how
much damage that thing loose up
ahead may do.”

“I shall ask the master computer.”
Lamarck’s blind face looked at no
one in particular. “Monsieur” when
none of the programmers are here
the master computer is the highest
authority. Will you abide by the de-
cision of the master computer?”

The girl with the beaded bag said,
“It’s the unit that controls the whole
Thing. All of it; all the exhibits.”
Joe wanted to shake himself free.
He could have done it easily — tibe
tiny servo motors which powered ro-
bols’ actions were strong only on tele-
vised honor dramas — but he found

himself unable to do so. Lamarck’s
aged face, although he knew it to be
a plastisol mask, his sigihtless eyes and
his intangible air of genius in defeat,
held him. “All right,” he said at
length. “I’ll do whatever your com-
puter says. How do we consult it?”
“1 can contact it from the service
closet. Monsieur.” iLamarck released
his arm and wheeled with uncanny
accuracy to face the Empire ward-
robe. The two girls watched him ex-
pressionlessly. M soon as the doors
had closed Joe^^bolted for die exit
leading to the next atom.

He did not wait for the belt to
carry him this time, but scram-
bled up it. Behind him the unsteady
tapping of high-heeled shoes told
him that at least one of the two girls
was following him.

The atom into which he burst held
Charles Darwin, but the great scien-
tist lay tumbled on the floor, his mid-
section a mass of smashed circuit
elements which a Galapagos tortoise
near him appeared to regard incuri-
ously. Moths big as swans covered
every wall, their wings stiffly extend-
ed to make an incredible pattern of
iridescent color.

He was bending over the inert
Darwin when something whistled past
his head. He heard it strike the wall
behind him and fall clattering to the
floor as he looked up.

The vandal was no longer hiding.
He stood near a scale model of
H.M.S. Beagle, his left hand grasping
a bundle of slender rods with ragged,
razor-sharp ends. His ri^t arm was
drawn back as thou^ to cast a spear,
and as Joe watched he whipped it

HOUSE OF ANCESTORS

115

forward; there was barely time to
jerk himself to one side as the jagged
sliver hurtled toward him. With a
solid thudding sound it buried itself
in Darwin’s chest.

He jerked it out as he drew him-
self erect, poised to dodge the next
missile. It came flying at his face.
As he ducked, the vandal leaped on-
to the belt which would carry him
to the next atom.

That atom was empty a moment
after Joe arrived, but a metal sliver
plucked at his shirt as he jumped
from the belt, and he saw his quarry
disappear into the next tube.

After that he lost count of the
atoms through which they passed,
and he no longer noticed what dis-
plays they held and whether they
were complete or not.

The structure of The Thing was
complex, and most of the atoms pos-
sessed several radiating tubes so that
the figure he was pursuing could
easily have shaken him off. But he
did not seem to wish to do so; and
when Joe grew too fatigued to climb
along the steep belts that carried them
higher and higher he found that he
lost no ground in the pursuit. Always,
at the end of each tube he glimpsed
the man running for the next belt.
And it was always the belt which
would loft them highest that he fi-
nally chose.

But as he continued the pursuit
Joe came to realize that he also was
followed. Behind him the sound of
the two girls’ feet grew until it was
the roar of a crowd, high pitched and
quick voiced.

At last they reached an atom which
had no floor, and from which no

belt led, an empty globe of fiber
glass with gaping holes in its sides.
He saw the man he had followed
waiting with a metal sliver upraised
beside the lowest of the holes, and
only blue sky and clouds beyond.
Behind him were the hurrying noises
of a hundred women.

“Go ahead,” he called. “What are
you going to do — jump?”

The figure silhouetted against the
sky only stared at him dumbly.

Upright Joe walked forward, down
the curving inside of the sphere that
led to the level bottom, then slowly
up until the man he had followed all
these thousands of feet into the air
and he were no more than a few
yards apart. The spearlike fragment
of metal rod remained poised; but
the corners of the man’s mouth drew
down and down with each step he
took until the yellowish skin must
have been ready to tear under the
strain and the mouth was drawn d^en
to show the square white teeth.

Then, with a gesture that was
almost casual, the metal sliver was
flipped into the void. With his shoul-
der down Joe rushed forward, struck
the man, and drew him away from
the edge.

The man’s resistance revived at the
moment of contact, and for a few
seconds he struggled desperately. He
still held four or five pieces of
metal similar to the one he had
thrown away in his left hand; but
Joe pinned it, then jerked one from
him to drive against his throat. The
struggling stopped.

“\^at’s happening,” someone be-
hind him asked. “\^at are those
things?”

HOUSE OF ANCESTORS

117

From the corner of an eye he saw
the girl who had called herself
Mary Hogan. Behind her came the
girl with the beaded bag; then* as he
watched, a third girl who wmre a
skirt that reached h^ ankles. And
behind her, some stepping agilely
from the belt, some staggering clum-
sily, came woman after woman.

Many were young, and some were
pretty and even beautifid, but others
were neither and a few were mon-
strou^y fat. Several wore silks, but
most were in plain dresses not much
better than rags.

^‘What are those things?” Mary
Hogan asked again. She was stand-
ing close to his shoulder now. “What
are you going to do?”

“Steel construction strips he’s rip-
ped out of something,” Joe told her.
“And I’m going to 1^ him with this
on^ — rip him wide open. Want to
watch?” He pushed one jagged end
of the piece he held against the
other’s body.

“Don’t!”

Joe stared down at the impassive
face of the man under him and
drove the splinter tighter still; the
face contorted under the pressure un-
til malice blasted from it like heat
from the top of an open crucible.

The girl in the long skirt dropped
to her knees beside him. “Don’t you
know who that is?” she asked. She
was not pretty, but somehow clean
looking and attractive.

-“It’s a robot.” Joe’s voice was stub-
born, although he found himself gasp-
ing for breath in the thin air. “An-
other cnunmy, clanking robot; a ro-

bot with my face. I’m going to wreck
him.”

“I wasn’t sure you knew who it
was,” the girl murmured.

“You think I don’t know my own
face? What I’d like to know is what
sort of dirty joke is being played
here.”

“I think I can tell you,” Mary
Hogan said; she stooped b^ide the
kneeling girl, pushing her long hair
away from her face. “It involves who
all of us are too. Have you guessed
yet?”

“You’re robots too,” Joe said bit-
terly. “That’s why the robot pre-
'‘tending to be a priest would bless
you and not me. You aren’t a real
person any more than this thing is.”

“We’re more — I’m more than
that. Don’t you know who I am yet?”

He said something inaudible.

“I couldn’t hear you.” She bent
closer, the other women crowding
around her.

“You’re supposed to be my moth-
er; my mother the way she looked
when I was bom. My real mother is
still alive in Brooklyn.”

4 4 '^his is' the way I was when you
JL were conceived,” the girl said.
“It’s at conception that the heritage
is passed.”

Joe nodded. “I knew it once I’d
thought of it. That skirt-and-blouse
outfit of yours: mini-skirts and op-
art prints mean ’67 or ’68. I’m twen-
ty-four, so that puts you just about
right, and I guess the girl with the
bag back there is your mother, and
this one,” he looked at the kneeling
woman in the long skirt, “is her
mother.”

118

Mary Hogan nodded. “Your
grandmother and great grandmother,
really; it wa$ from your cells that the
transducers took the patterns. It used
to be believed that only the parents’
own heredity could be transmitted,
but recently we’ve discovered that La-
marck was correct in certain respects
— every characteristic, as it exists at
conception, is to some extent trans-
mitted to the new generation. That’s
what he was supposed to explain to
you in his atom.”

Joe said stubbornly, “But you’re
really a robot.”

“Physically, yes. But mentally —
spiritually if you will — I am a rep-
lica of the young woman who be-
came your mother. Tomorrow I will
be someone else.” There was sadness
in her voice.

“You change?”

“Yes; that’s the point of this entire
complex. There are a hundred of us
here who constitute what might be
called a repertory company. As visi-
tors enter the master computer reads
a component of some randomly se-
lected individual’s genetic heritage,
then programs one of us as that
person’s forebear.”

“But over and over?” Joe looked at
the crowd of women. “Generation
after generation? From the same per-
son?”

The girl in the long skirt said, “It
wasn’t supposed to work this way.
But an automatic program sequence
was installed that demands maximum
utilization of us. With a whole crowd
of visitors coming in each of us
would have been assigned to a differ-
ent one, but with only you in the
complex. . . ”

“I got read every time I went past
a thingamajig, and they’re in all the
tubes. I see. But what about him?”
“He was the first one, really,” the
girl with the beaded bag said unhap-
pily. “Only something went hay-
wire.”

“Well, what went haywire? How
does he fit into this?”

The other girls looked at Mary
Hogan.

“You have a death wish. Do you
realize that, Joe?”

He shook his head. “I want to
live as much as anyone else.”
“Consciously, yes. But not sub-
consciously. No one who didn’t want
to die would make up that story of
refusing surgery for his wife’s sake.”
“How did you know . . . ?”

“I’ve been contained in your body
all your life; there’s a carryover of in-
formation — don’t you remember
that I knew your name when we first
met? In so far as I am your mother
— and till my program is changed
that’s very far — that carryover is all
that holds me sane. Without it I
would be finding myself suddenly
here without an explanation at all.”
Joe looked down at the man he
held pinned. “And that’s the way you
know about him too?”

“Partly, and I can guess the rest.
For a long time it’s been known that
a person’s will to die could actually
produce the death, and to do that
it must affect a change in certain cell
structures. Somehow the first time
the tranducers tried to read your
DNA they produced this. The master
computer corrected for the error dn
subsequent readings by automatically

HOUSE OF ANCESTORS

119

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rejecting all male data matrices, but
it could do nothing about this one
which was already programmed. He
is your own personal hope for death
personified.”

Joe clenched his teeth. “He’ll get
what he wants; because I’m going to
kill him.”

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were
you.”

“Why not?”

“Your death wish is strong now, I
can only guess what destroying an
image of yourself will do to it. You’ve
been using that metal thing to hold
him down — look at your own
chest.”

He looked. The opposite end of the
steel sliver was as sharp as the one
with which he was threatening his
double. It had torn his shirt and
scratched his chest until it was cov-
ered with his own blood. For a long
time he stared at it.

VII

They found him sitting outside
TTie Thing, waiting for them.
Chuck yelled, “See! I told you he’d
be here. He’s just got too much sense
to wear himself out walking around
the grounds with us.”

In Father Mendel’s room he was
able to get Bonnie alone long enough
to explain that he had decided to have
the spike removed after all ,and had
already telephoned the doctor from
Howard Johnson’s while he was wait-
ing. When she asked if he were not
afraid he shook his head, remember-
ing suddenly that Bonnie was preg-
nant. END

always boom for advancement!

The last cars had pulled into Clark
W. Kerr Memorial Parking Lot
for the opening session of his new
Physics I course, and Gleason was
still searching frantically for the rest
of his notes. Today of all days he
could not afford to be late for class.
It had taken all the pull he could
muster to get prime time on the
closed-circuit tv, and he’d surely be
relegated to the early morning hours
or even cancelled if he were late the

monitor. He was digging hurriedly
through the stacks of Physical Ab-
stracts that had been delivered that
morning, the six-foot bundle repre-
senting summaries of all the papers
in his field published during the pre-
ceding week. Under one of the piles
he found the missing pages of his
notes and, with a relieved sigh, fitted
them into the sheaf of papers in his
hand. Using the camera lens as a
mirror he smoothed down his rum-

first day. With only one hundred and
twenty-seven research papers to his
name he was lucky to have made
assistant professor anyway.

Quarters were dropping into park-
ing meter slots, and the air filled with
the buzz of hungry machinery click-
ing off the time. The big screen at
the front of the lot lit up hopefully,
then went dark again as Gleason,
seated in his office a half-mile away,
shook his head at the engineer on his

pled hair, then nodded to the waiting
engineer. The red light went on, and
he saw his own owlishly bespectacled
face staring out from the monitor.

“The pursuit of knowledge,” he
began, “has always been the province
of a handful of lonely, dedicated
men ...”

He felt better once class was over.

It hadn’t gone badly at all.
There’d been some disturbance on

121

the screen from a passing jet, and
one of the filmstrips had run out be-
fore he’d finished explaining it, but
otherwise the show had been tech-
nically competent. He sighed, put
put down his notes on the desk, and
began to burrow through the piles of
abstracts that filled most of the small
office. Buried in a comer he found
a two-cup coffee maker, now empty.
Again Gleason seethed whh the con-
sciousness of his inferior status. As-
sociate professors rated five-cup cof-
fee makers and didn’t have to go
hunting water all the time! He
thought of borrowing the larger size
from the office of Professor Morgan,
who had died only yesterday, but
decided against it since the theft
would soon be discovered by Mor-
gan’s successor, and it could mean
Gleason’s job. If he wanted a cup of
coffee there was nothing to do but
trek to the graduate students’ lounge.

He unearthed a chipped and black-
ened coffee cup, shoved a pile of
abstracts away from the door and
ventured into the hallway of the
physics building. A sharp hiss from
the office to the right of his brought
him up short. Turning he found the
department’s other assistant professor,
Gridley Farrington, peering out at
him through a partially opened door.
The other man, shorter than Gleason
with a sharpened nose and slick, black
hair, slipped from his office and con-
fronted his colleague with a broad
and strikingly insincere smile. “Off
to the kiddies’ lounge again?” he in-
quired, staring pointedly at Gleason’s
cup.

Gleason could understand Farring-
ton’s hostility, as the poor man had

An IF First

Each issue of IF features a writer who hat
never been published before. May's
"first" writer is John Thomas, a 33-year-
old UCLA graduate who lives in Los
Angeles. Recently Thomas edited Film
Society Review, a monthly which he says
"is published for those hardy groups who
screen old movies in colleges and broken-
down auditoriums everywhere." Of late
he has decided to devote all his time to
writing, and Publish and Perish — be-
lieve it or not — is his first submission
and first saiel

published a scant one hundred and
twenty-three research papers and was
thus even lower on the multiversity
social scale than he. Of course seven-
teen of Gleason’s publications had
been purchased from graduate stu-
dents who had dropped out before
getting their degrees, but Farrington
wasn’t likely to have done all his own
work either.

“Just thought I’d get some coffee,”
Gleason replied, waving has cup
vaguely. “It’s a chance to keep in
touch with the students, see what
they’re thinking. It’s hard to get to
know anybody teaching your courses
over television.”

“Oh, sure,” Farrington grinned un-
pleasantly. “Well, Gleason,” he went
on, turning apparently to what was
re^ly on his mind, “what do you
think about old Morgan dying?”
“terrible thing,” Gleason mum-
bled.

“Oh, I don’t mean that! I mean
who do you think will get his job?”
Gleason had thought of little else
since Morgan’s death, but he wasn’t
going to let Farrington know that.
“Well, I suppose there are lots of

122

choices. Hunnicutt could bring in a
man from outside.”

“Ridiculous!” Farrington snapped.
“Silly idea! Surely they’d choose a
faculty man, someone with an — er
— adequate publication record.”
“Well, probably,” Gleason admit-
ted, shifting nervously from one foot
to the other. He himself had been at
the multiversity only a few months,
a replacement in fact for Morgan,
who had been promoted to an as-
sociate professorship after nineteen
years on the staff. He wasn’t familiar
with all the nuances of departmental
rivalries yet.

“You’ll go for the job, I suppose,”
Farrington ventured.

“Well, if they offer it to me . . . ”
“Oh, don’t play modest with me,
Gleason!” The little man smoothed
down the back of his slick hair. “If
you want the job you’ve got to fight
for it! Nobody can afford to wait
for offers any more. Are you going
to fight or not?”

Gleason didn’t quite understand
the implications of the question. Far-
rington must want the job for him-
self, but surely the four-publication
margin would be decisive if the chair-
man chose to recruit from his own
staff. “Well,” Gleason said finally,
“HI probably do whatever I can to
get the job, if that’s what you mean.”
Farrington smiled nastily, but at
the same time turned rather pale.
“That’s what I thought,” he said and
disappeared into his office, snapping
the door shut behind him.

Gleason shrugged and continued
on down the corridor to the
graduate lounge, where he found four

anonymous^students and a luke-warm
urn of coffee. He sipped some of the
coffee and attempted to make con-
versation with the students, none of
whom appeared to see any advantage
in talking to an assistant professor.
The belated entrance of a fifth stu-
dent, however, left Gleason somewhat
less than pleased. For the boy was
Alec Throckmorton, a shambling,
beetle-browed graduate student of
minimal intelligence and doubtful
competence, whose attempts to make
up for his lack of brilliance through
an anxious, almost fawning desire to
please rendered him doubly odious.
But, since his father happened to
supervise the awarding of grants
through the National Science Founda-
tion, Throckmorton was assured not
only of his degree, but of a soft berth
as lab assistant to the least prestigious
member of the staff — Gleason.

“How ya doin’, professor?” the
boy demanded, slapping Gleason’s
shoulder and dislodging most of the
contents of his coffee cup. “All ready
for the big spearmint tomorrow?”

Gleason recalled with a chill that
the boy was scheduled to assist him
the following day in a critical and
perhaps dangerous investigation into
the properties of one of the newer
synthetic elements. “All ready,
Throckmorton,” he sighed. “I hope
you can set up the equipment proper-
ly, this time.”

Throckmorton nodded his head
vigorously. “Don’t worry, professor.
Sometimes I get confused about
where the wires go, but I’ve got it all
straightened out now.”

“Green wire to the red coil, re-
member?”

PUBLISH AND PERISH

123

“Oh — uh — yeah, I remember.”
Before the boy could generate further
unwelcome conversation, Gleason
hurried away.

After awhile he wandered back to
his own office carrying a tin of water
for his coffee maker. Though he had
closed his office door on leaving it
was now ajar, and Gleason wondered
idly if he had missed a visitor. Pour-
ing the water into the coffee maker
he added some grounds from a jar in
his desk. He plugged in the percolator
and stepped around a stack of ab-
stracts to get his cup.

The explosion wasn’t very loud,
but it was powerful enough to lift
the abstracts and deposit them solidly
against the small of his back. Gleason
went down across another pile of
papers as a fusillade of deadly frag-
ments rattled angrily against the
walls. In the sudden silence he sat
up and stared at the smoking hole
where the coffee maker had been
sitting.

His door flew open, and for a
moment Farrington’s ratlike face was
momentarily framed, an expectant
grin fading to dismay as he saw Glea-
son staring back at him. Then the
face was gone, and Gleason heard
rapid footsteps in the hallway. A few
moments later the door again swung
open to reveal the department chair-
man, Professor Hunnicutt.

“Starting sooner than I’d expect-
ed,” was Hunnicuu’s only comment
as he helped Gleason to his feet.
“Bomb in the coffee maker, eh? Not
really ingenious.”

Gleason examined the remains of
the percolator mutely. Only the

heavy stack of abstracts had prevent-
ed him from being slashed by flying
metal and glass from the explosion.
Hunnicutt came up behind him and
peered over his shoulder. “Looks
like the bomb was connected to the
heating element, went off when the
coil started to warm up.” Hunnicutt
shook his head disapprovingly. “Not
really a good job. Always takes a
few seconds for heat to get to the
element — long enough for the in-
tended victim to walk away from the
bomb. A really top-notch man would
have connected the bomb directly to
the electrical circuit.”

It occurred to Gleason that the
chairman’s remarks were not entirely
appropriate to an instance of attempt-
ed murder. He turned to stare at his
boss, a tall, white-haired man impec-
cably* clothed in gray pinstripe.
“What,” he demanded, “is going on
here?”

Hunnicutt slipped a fatherly arm
about Gleason’s shoulders. “I keep
forgetting you’re new here, my boy.
Not really conversant with the multi-
versity traditions.” He kicked aside
a stack of abstracts with a well-polish-
ed oxford. “Come up to my office
for a few minutes. I think we can
easily straighten this out.”

The chaiman motioned casually to
a bored custodian who had suddenly
materialized and led Gleason into the
hallway and down the long corridor
to the left. Gleason noted that Far-
rington’s door was tightly closed and
that no sound issued from the sealed
interior.

Hunnicutt seated himself at his
desk and leaned back comfortably,
moving a ten-cup percolator to one

124

side. “Bit of a shock for you, I sup-
pose, coining without warning and
all Warning from me, I mean. I as-
sume Farrington did check with you
to make sure you wanted to compete
before he planted the bomb.”^

Gleason was thoroughly disoriented
now. Something rather unusual seem-
ed to be going on within the walls of
what he had come to think of as a
rather staid multiversity. “I — I don’t
think he really . . . *’ Gleason began
and then recalled the peculiar con-
versation with Farrington of an hour
before. “He said something about
fighting for the appointment . . . . ”

“Yes,” said Hunnicutt brusquely,
“the appointment.” He leaned back,
making a tent of his fingers. “Ifs a
real problem for me. Need a really
top-notch man for the job, if you
know what I mean. So many Ph.D*s
these days, so many publications, one
can’t re^ly keep up with the qualifi-
cations any more. Don’t want to go
outside the present staff if 1 can help
it. But, you know, 1 need some real
evidence that I’ve got a top-notch
man to fill the vacancy.”

Gleason had a feeling that he didn’t
completely understand the conversa-
tion. “You know my qualifications
...” he began.

Hunnicutt waved him aside im-
patiently. “Know it all; no better or
worse than Farrington’s except for a
small difference in the publications
index. Really couldn’t choose on the
basis of what I know now. Farring-
ton’s got seniority in service, of
course, but I never let that influence
an appointment.” Hunnicutt’s manner
softened a bit. “It’s ingenuity I like
to see, my boy. Farrington’s trying

hard, but that coffee-maker stunt isn’t
really the sort of thing to convince
me. The heating elem^t, you know.
Now, I wonder if you could think of
some better way . . . . ”

“Better way, sir? To do what?”

Hunnicutt laughed nervously,
tamping tobacco into a professorish
pipe. “Why, to kill him, of course!
He’s had his chance, now it’s your
turn! If you can think of a more in-
genious — and successful — method
than his, you’ll not only have con-
vinced me of your own abilities, but
you’ll have eliminated your only de-
partmental rival!”

Gleason stared at his boss. “Kill
him, sir?”

“Well, that’s the tradition!” Hunni-
cutt snapped with a sudden return to
his mood of irritation. “Can’t fight
a good college tradition, I always say.
Besides, it’s really the only way. How
can I tell who’s really top-notch with-
out some kind of test?” He paused,
reflecting. **The whole thing began
really as a kind of accident a few
years ago. Milton and Borofsky had
decided to duel for the post being
vacated by Anderson, biit Borofsky
cheated by devising a way to assassin-
ate Milton with the chimes in the
college bdl tow^ even before the
duel took place. Read it in some mys-
tery story, I believe. Of course we
Couldn’t turn Borof^cy over to the
police, top-notch men being hard to
get as they are. So I promoted him
to the job — rather admired his
ingenuity, as a matter of fact.

“Well, couldn’t do much a few
months later when Leonard electro-
cuted Borofsky to get Blassingame’s
job. A sort of precedent had been set,

PUBLISH AND PERISH

125

you see. An3rway, that’s the way it
grew, from small begiimings, as these
traditions often do. Nowadays 1
wouldn’t consider making appoint-
ments any other way.” He was
friendlier now, smiling an encourag-
ing smile at Gleason. *1 think you’ve
got the stuff it takes to carry on the
old tradition, my boy. Farrington’s
good, but not really my type of re-
search man. Heating coils! Think up
something a little better, and you
won’t have to worry about that as-
sociate professorship.”

Gleason was still trying to make
some audible comment as Hunnicutt
ushered him briskly to the door. “To
tell the truth,” the chairman was say-
ing, “I’ve been a little disappointed
in the quality of assassinations around
the department the last year — too
messy, too routine. Now, if you could
come up with something really top
notch on your first time out .... ”
His voice dropped to a friendly con-
fidentiality. “Well, you’d have a head
start on a really outstanding career
in science.” Gleason found himself
standing in the corridor as the chair-
man’s door si^ed shut behind him.

He drifted back down the hallway
and into his office, peering apprehen-
sively at Farrington’s closed door be-
fore he entered. The custodian had
just finished cleaning up his office,
and a shiny new two-cup percolator
had already been installed in one
comer. Gleason noted with relief
that several bales of shredded ab-
stracts had heen removed.

What was he to do now? He
couldn’t go along with Hunni-
cutt’s plan — simply couldn’t! He’d

never killed anybody in his life and
wasn’t going to start now. Yet ap-
parently his own life was in danger,
and if he didn’t try some kind of
counterattack the assistant professor-
sffip would surely go to Farrington.

heard vague rumors of the kind
of cutthroat competition that had
developed in the multiversities over
the past decade, but he’d never an-
ticipated anything like this. A little
sabotage to divert government re-
search funds — that was common
enough. But murder! If this was the
kind of game they were playing, he
wanted no part of it.

Gleason glanced at his watch and
saw that it was almost time for his
next class. He went over to the wall
case and racked out the tv camera.
Removing a sheaf of notes from his
desk, he sat down in his chair and
turned toward the camera; only a
half minute to go, he noted. Sudden-
ly he realized that he was still a mess
from the explosion, his hair on end,
his clothing rumpled. He looked
about for a mirror, then remenibered
the trick of using the camera lens
as a last-minute mirror. He peered
at the camera, trying to catch his
reflection in the darkened lens.

There was no lens; only a slim,
blackened tube.

Gleason sat for a moment digesting
this fact as the clock hand crept to-
ward the hour. The absence of a lens
might mean several things, but only
one occurred to him at the moment.
He dived for the floor.

The red light winked on, and a
high-energy laser beam spat from the
tube, passing just over Gleason’s
desk and burning a hole in the wall

126

behind it. Overloaded circuits began
to whine, ^d the camera burned it-
self out within seconds, the beam
vanishing as its power supply was cut
off. After a few moments the top of
Gleason’s head rose warily above the
level of the desk, round eyes fixed
on the smoking hulk of the television
camera.

The phone rang. It was Professor
Hunnicutt.

“What’s going on in there,*’ Hunni-
cutt demanded between audible sucks
on his pipe. ‘Wou’re twenty seconds
late getting on the air! Students are
waiting — knowledge calls, my boy!”

“It’s Farrington, I think, sir.”
Gleason sat down on the floor cross-
legged, not quite ready to leave the
shelter of his desk. “He seems to have
installed a laser beam in my tv cam-
era. He — he nearly burned a hole
in meP

“No?” came Hunnicutt’s shocked
voice over the wire. “Used a tv
camera, did he? That sort of Aing
won’t do at all!”

“No, sir,” said Gleason, brighten-
ing.

“No man has the right to inter-
rupt class programming for person-
al business,” said Hunnicutt, right-
eous anger thundering in his voice.
“Not a really top-notch kind of thing
to do. Shows the sort of degeneration
of standards in the academic com-
munity the last few years.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All violence must take place out-
side class hours, committee meetings
and conference periods,” Hunnicutt
said firmly. “I’ll have to talk to Far-
rington about this.”

“Er — sir ”

Hunnicutt’s voice rasped with im-
patience. “Well, what is it? I’ve got
to get back to work.”

Still crouching, Gleason cradled
the phone in both hands. “I — I was
thinldng, sir. I’m not sure 1 really
want that associate professorship
after all. I’ve only been here a few
months, and . . . . ”

“Nonsense!” Hunnicutt roared.
“You’re a top-notch man. Want to
see you move ahead?”

“Yes, sir. But, you see, murder’s
not really .... I mean, I’m not Ae
type for this sort of thing.”

“Whafs that?” Menace edged
Hunnicutt’s voice.

“What I’m trying to say is, I’m not
really Ae type to kill someone just to
get a job.”

A long silence stretched across Ae
wire. “Not the type, eh?” Hunnicutt
sighed wearily. “I’d thought better
of you, my boy. Really top-notch, I
thought. Felt sure you’d come
through.” Another silence. “You un-
derstand, of course, that we can’t
keep a man on the faculty who scorns
our department’s hallowed traA-
tions.”

“Sir?”

“I mean, Gleason, that you do not
yet have tenure.”

“No, sir.”

“Plenty who’d like your present
job, Gleason. And no other multi-
versity is likely to hire you without
a recommendation from me. Think it
over.” The wire went dead.

Gleason put down the phone and
rose cautiously to his feet. He cir-
cled the desk to peer at Ae fused
camera, Aen turned to stare at the
neat hole burned in the far wall of

PUBLISH AND PERISH

127

his office. A peaceful grouping of
trees and ivy could be glimpsed
through the aperture.

Gleason stood thinking about Hun-
nicutt’s words» the long struggle to
get his present job, his unfitness for
any real work in the outside world.
Hunnicutt was right — no other
multiversity would hire him without
a recommendation, and surely no one
would believe his story if he tried to
use it as an excuse. It was either get
out of this situation somehow or face
a diminishing career at some back*
water city college, stripped of re-
search funds and despairing of the
future.

Still sunk in misery, he called the
tv studio and cancelled all classes
for the rest of the day, since it would
take that long for his camera to be
replaced. Then he returned to a seri-
ous consideration of his problem.
What was he going to do? He
couldn’t kill anybodyl And how could
Farrington . . . ? There was a
thought I Was it possible that Farring-
ton was no more enthusiastic about
murder than he? Perhaps the poor
man had made the two attempts on
Gleason’s life out of nothing more
than a pathetic loyalty to his depart-
ment. U the two of them could get
together and make a deal ....

A few moments later Gleason was
knocking timidly at his neighbor’s
door, a cautious optimism in his heart
and a heavy paperweight in his hand
should the optimism prove unjusti-
fied. Gleason heard footsteps inside
the office, then Farrington’s hoarse
whisper at the door. “\^o’s there?”
“Gleason! I’ve got to talk to you!”

He heard a hasty scuffling, then
silence. “Don’t bother to try shooting
through the door,” Farrington’s muf-
fled voice called finally. “I’ve got
an energy field aroimd my desk!”

“For God’s sake, man, I don’t
want to hurt you. I just want to talk
this thing over!”

“There’s nothing to talk about,”
Farrington snarled. “You won’t get
me to open this door!”

Gleason stepped to one side of the
door in case Farrington decided to
do some shooting himself. “Let’s be
sensible,” he called in a stage whis-
per. “\^y should we go along with
this crazy scheme when the stakes
aren’t worth it? Maybe we could work
something out!”

“There’s nothing to work out!”
Farrington snapped back. “I need the
job! If I knew how to do anything
else I wouldn’t be a college pro-
fessor!”

Nervously Gleason shifted the
paperweight from hand to hand.
“But, look, Farrington. We must be
able to make some kind of deal. If
we could just talk rationally about
this I’m sure — ”

“There’s nothing to talk about,
and even if there were . ...” A sud-
den, protracted silence fell. Gleason
eased up to the door and put his ear
against the panelling. He thought he
could hear the faint sounds of hur-
ried movement inside. “On second
thought,” Farrington went on, “you
may be right. At least we can talk it
over. Come on inside, and let’s dis-
cuss it.”

Gleason straightened, shifted the
paperweight to his left hand and
reached for the doorknob. He froze

128

m that attitude, reflecting. After a
few moments he ventured, “Maybe
you’d better come out here instead,
Farrington. The — er — light’s bet-
ter.”

**No,” Farrington’s distant voice
replied, “you come in here. We want
to keep this private.”

“We can have some coffee in the
lounge.”

“I’ve got a coffee maker in here.”

‘T think you’d better come out
here.”

A half-hour later Gleason gave up
and returned to his office to sit
brooding at his desk. Farrington
seemed determined to kill him, and
he stSl couldn’t work up much en-
thusiasm for a counterattack. At any
rate he couldn’t think clearly about
the problem with Farrington plot-
ting actively next door. Kicking aside
a pile of abstracts, he exited quietly
through the hole in the wall.

After a sleepless night in a rented
hotel room (in case Farrington
had his home address) he rose bleary
eyed and despairingjy to face what
would surely be another miserable
day. He still had no plan, no hope.
Perhaps there was some way of mere-
ly disabling his rival .... But no,
he couldn’t consider violence at all.
Still, wasn’t one of Farrington’s arms
or legs worth his own life? It was
only a small concession to principle.

He arrived at his office early and
found that the new* tv camera had
been installed and the laser hole
sealed up. Of Farrington there was
no sign. Gleason boiled some water
in his percolator (after a thorough
inspection), but soon discovered that

his container of coffee had been
shattered in one or more of the re«
cent office catastrophes. There was
nothing to do but go to the gradual^
lounge again. He slipped out quietly,
pausing only to make sure Farring-
ton’s door was closed, and ran tiptoe
down the hallway, dodging arou^ a
bit in case of pursuit by missiles. In
the lounge he found no one but
Throckmorton, snoring on one of the
couches.

“The spearmint,” said Throckmor-
ton, opening one eye to peer dully at
his boss. “Today’s the day!”

In his anxiety over the murder
attempts, Gleason had forgotten the
experimental work scheduled with
Throckmorton for that day. He felt
a twinge of apprehen^on; the equip-
ment they were using was dangerous,
and in his present mood he coidd
make any one of a number of errors.
Still, if he tried to put off the experi-
ment today his standing with Hunni-
cutt might be damaged irreparably.

“Go ahead and set it up,” he said.
“I’ll be down later to work with you.”

The shaggy boy unfolded himself
from the couch, grinning vacuously.
“I’ll get started on it right away, pro-
fessor. Count on me.” He stumbled
into Gleason, spilling the cup of cof-
fee the man had just poured for him-
self, and shambled off toward the
stairway. The research lab was down-
stair’s in the basement, almost directly
beneath Gleason’s office.

“And Throckmorton,” Gleason
called after him, “don’t forget — it’s
the red wire on the green coil.”

“Green wire on red coil,” Throck-
morton assured him and increased
his pace, trying to appear enthusiastic.

PUBLISH AND PERISH

I2P

Gleason’s head buzzed with the
effects of little sleep and much worry,
so that he barely heard the boy. AIL
his remaining emotional energy went
into the task of drawing himself an-
other cup of coffee. It . wasn’t until
he was back at his desk diat the boy’s
last words finally registered.

He recalled at the same moment
the possible result of attaching the
green wire to the red coil.

Suppressing a howl, he headed for
the door, twisting frantically at the
knob.

The door refused to open.

Gleason stood momentarily trans-
fixed, the doorknob stiU in his hand.
The door had never stuck like this
before. He rattled the knob experi-
mentally, bent over to peer through
the keyhole. Something was blocking
it from the other side, something
that was not a key. At the same mo-
ment he felt the doorknob grow
warm beneath his hand.

Gleason snatched his fingers away
and stood up, backing away from the
door. The knob was turning cherry
red, and smoke had begun to issue
from the door itself. Could Throck-
morton already, .... Then he heard
a bubble of wild laughter from next
door, and he knew.

“Got you this time!” Farrington
screamed at him through their com-
mon wall. “My heat converter will
fry you alive within the next couple
of minutes! The job is mine!”

Gleason wiped his damp brow
with the back of his hand,
searching about for some means of
escape. Since the physics building
was determinedly modem, it had no

windows whatsoever; the door was
the only way in or out. He glanced
upward at the footsquare grill of the
air-conditioning unit. Was he slim
enou^ to worm his body through
that passage? Desperately Gleason
shoved ^ desk under the opening
and clambered iip to test the grill.
Six strong screws held it firmly across
the outlet, and Gleason had no screw-
driver.

He peered down, spied the tele-
phone on his desk. He might still be
able to summon help. He had crouch-
ed down and was just reaching for
the receiver when the phone rang.
Lifting the receiver he heard Throck-
morton’s dull tones. “Everything’s all
connected up„ professor. When ya
cornin’ down?”

“Throckmorton, get help! I’m
locked in my office, and Farrington
is trying to kill me!”

“What’s that, professor?” the boy
shouted. “I can hardly hear ya with
all the noise from the equipment!”

“I said Farrington — ” Gleason’s
voice froze. “Did you say ‘noise
from the equipment?’”

“Yeah, professor, I got it goin’,
all right.”

“It’s operating — with the green
wire on the red coil?”

“Sure, right now it’s — ”

But the sentence remained un-
completed as the phone went dead
and the right wall of Gleason’s office
vanished. He dropped the receiver
and stood staring at the vacant spot
where Farrington’s office — and
Farrington — had stood. About fifty
square feet of floor space had been
vaporized instantly. The laboratory,
Gleason now recalled, was almost di-

rectly beneath his office. But just al-
most directly. Actually it was be-
neath Farrington’s.

The door had stopped smoking,
and Gleason threw it open easily, the
now harmless attachment to Farring-
ton’s heat converter clattering to the
floor. He saw Hunnicutt scutde down
the hall toward him, pipe bouncing
nervously between his teeth. The
chairman halted and stood awestruck
before the hole in his building. At
last he turned to Gleason, tears brim-
ming in his eyes. “My boy, this is
the most absolutely top-notch piece
of work I’ve ever seen in this de-
partment.”

“But — ”

“Oh, it’ll be rather expensive to
replace this much of the building;
but we’ve got government money, and
I must say the loss is really worth it,
under the circumstances. Never seen
a cleaner, more humane liquidation
since the tradition began.”

A ragged figure appeared at the
head of the basement stairs and
lurched toward them. Apparently the
force of the beam of destruction, or
whatever the thing was, had been
directed almost entirely upward. “It
was really Throckmorton, here — ”
Hunnicutt majestically placed an
arm about the shoulders of the fright-
ened boy. “This young man gave you
a hand, did he? Pulled the trigger, so
to spe^, while you were the bait.
Brave lads, both of youl”
Throckmorton, who had never in
his entire life been addressed by any-
one above the level of associate pro-
fessor stood open-mouthed, basking

REMEMBER:

in the glow of sudden recognition.
“You will no doubt benefit from this,
too, Throckmorton,” the chairman
went on. “Naturally there’ll be two
assistant professorsMps vacant now,
and I’m sure we can arrange a spot
for you while you’re completing your
doctoral requirements.”

Perhaps, Gleason decided, there
was no point in rocking the boat after
all. With the coveted associate pro-
fessorship his, and the beginnings of
a new and infinitely murderous
weapon created by attaching the
green wire to the red cod, he was
well on his way to a brilliant career
in science.

“Come into my office, both of
you,” Hunnicutt was saying. “Got to
get started on the paperwork for
your appointments.”

Watching his boss chew vigorously
on his pipe, a foolproof idea for a
booby trap slipped unbidden into
Gleason’s mind. The whole thing was
ridiculous, he told himself. He
wouldn’t be in line for the depart-
mental chairmanship for years! Still,
it didn’t hurt .... “Do you have a
pencil and paper, professor?” he
asked. “I’d like to jot down a little
idea I just had.”

“Certainly, my boy,” Hunnicutt
smiled, handing him the pencil and
paper. “It’s the mark of a top-notch
scientist that he’s always thinking,
always searching for new ideas, al-
ways looking toward the future.”

“I’m afraid you’re right, sir,” Glea-
son said; he was still scribbling furi-
ously as he passed into the chair-
man’s darkened office. END

PUBLISH AND PERISH

New subscriptions and changes o! address
require 5 weeks to process!

131

by A. BERTRAM CHANDLER

Illustroted by BODIE

The ship was falling to pieces.
Grimes could redeem if — but

Bird-Brained

Navigator

132

Her inertial drive throbbing softly,
all hands at landing stations, all
passengers save one strapped in their
acceleration couches (a sudden emer-
gency requiring the use of the auxil-
iary reaction drive was unlikely, but

possible) the star ship Rim Dragon
dropped slowly down to Port Grimes
on Tharn.

The privileged passenger — al-
though in his case it was a right
rather than a privilege — who was
riding in the control room instead of
being incarcerated in his cabin was

133

Commodore John Grimes, Astrofiau-
tical Superintendent of Rim Runners.
But he said nothing, did nothing that
could be construed as inter fer^ce on
Jlis part. Legally speaking, of course,
he was no more than a guest in the
Juaer^s nerve center. But, at the same
time, he could and did exercise con-
siderable authority over the space-
going employees of Rim Runners,
made the ultimate decisions in such
matters as promotions and appoint-
ments. However, Captain Wenderby,
Rim Dragon's master, was a more
than merely competent ship-handler.
At no time did Grimes feel impelled
to make any suggestions, at no time
Hid his own hands start to reach out
hungrily for the controls.

So Grimes sat there, stolid and
solid in his acceleration chair, not
even now keeping a watchful eye on
the briskly effidem Wenderby and
his briskly efficient officers. They
needed no advice from him, would
heed none. But it was easier for them
than it had been for him, vdxen he
made his own first landing on Tharn
— how many years ago? Too many.
There had been no spaceport then,
with Spaceport Control kecinng the
master fully informed of meteorologi-
cal conditions during his entire de-
scent There had been no body of
assorted officials — Port Captain,
Customs, Port Health and all the
rest of it — standing by awaiting the
ship’s arrival. Grimes, in fact, had
not known what or whom to expect,
although his robot probes had told
him that the culture of the planet
was roughly analogous to that of
Earth’s Middle Ages. Even so, he
had been lucky in that he had set

Faraway Quest down near a city con-
trolled by the priesthood rather than
in an area under the sway of one of
the robber barons. •

He looked out of one of the big
viewports. From this altitude he could
see no signs of change — but change
there must have been, change there
had been. On that long ago explora-
tion voyage in the old Quest he had
opened up the worlds of the Eastern
Circuit to commerce — and the trad-
er does more to destroy the old ways
than either the gunboat or the mis-
sionary. In this case the trader would
have been the only outside influence.
The Rim Worlds had always, fortu-
nately for them, been governed by
cynical, tolerant agnostics to whom
gunboat diplomacy was distasteful.
The Rim Worlders had always valued
their own freedom too highly to wish
to interfere with that of any other
race.

But even commerce^ thought
Grimes, is an interference. It makes
people want the things that they can-
not yet produce far themselves — the
mass-produced entertainment, the
labor-saving machines^ the weapons.
Grimes sighed. I suppose that we
were right to arm the priesthood
rather than the robber barons. In any
case, the/ve been good customers.

Captain Wenderby, still intent on
his controls, spoke. “It must seem
strange, coming back after all these
years, sir.”

“It does. Captain.”

“And to see the spaceport that
they named after you, for the first
time.”

“A man could have worse monu-
ments.”

134

, Grimes transferred his attention
from the viewport to the screen that
showed, highly magnified, what was
directly astern of and below the ship.
Yes, there it was. Port Grimes. A
great circle of gray-gleaming con-
crete, ringed by warehouses and ad-
ministration buildings, with cranes
and gantries and conveyor belts cast-
ing long shadows in the ruddy light
of the westering sun. (He had made
the first landing on rough heathland,
and for a long, heart-stopping mo-
ment had doubted that the tripedal
landing gear would be able to ad-
just to the irregularities of the sur-
face.) And there was Rim Griffon,
the reason for his voyage to Tham.
There was the ship whose officers
refused to sail with each other and
with the master. There was the mess
that had to be sorted out with as few
firings as possible — Rim Runners,
as usual, was short of spacefaring
personnel.

There was the mess.

It was some little time before John^
Grimes could get around to doing
anything about it. As he should have
foreseen, he was a personality, an
historical personality at that. He was
the first outsider to have visited
Tham. He was responsible for the
breaking of the power of the barons,
for the rise to power of the priest-
hood and the merchants. Too, the
Rim Confederacy’s Ambassador on
Tham had made it plain that he,
and the government that he repre-
sented, would appreciate it if the
Commodore played along. The delay
to the departure of a very unimport-
ant merchant vessel was far less im-

THE BIRD.BRAINED NAVIGATOR

portant than the preservation of inter-
stellar good relations.

So Grimes was wined and dined,
which was no hardship, and obliged
to listen to long speeches, which was.
He was taken on sightseeing tours,
and was pleased to note that progress,
although inevitable, had been a con-
trolled progress, not progress for its
own sake. The picturesque had been
sacrificed only when essential for
motives of hygiene or real efficiency.
Electricity had supplanted the flar-
ing natural gas jets for house and
street lighting, but the importation
and evolution of new building tech-
niques and materials had not pro-
duced a mushroom growth of steel
and concrete matchboxes or plastic
domes. Architecture still retained its
essentially Thamian character, even
though the streets of the city were
no longer rutted, even though the
traffic on those same streets was now
battery-powered cars and no longer
animal-drawn vehicles. (Internal com-
bustion engines were manufactured
on the planet, but their use was pro-
hibited within urban limits.)

And at sea, change had come. At
the time of Grimes’s first landing the
only ocean-going vessels had been
the big schooners. Now sail was on
its way out, ousted by the steam tur-
bine. Yet the ships, with their fiddle
bows and their figureheads, with their
raked masts and funnels, still dis-
played an archaic charm that was
altogether lacking on Earth’s seas
and on the waters of most Man-col-
onized worlds. The commodore, who
was something of an authority on the
history of marine transport, would
dearly have loved to have made a

135

voyage in one of the steamers, but
he knew that time would not permit
this. Once he had sorted out Rim
Griffon's troubles, he would have to
return to Port Forlorn, probably in
that very ship.

At last he was able to get around
to the real reason for his visit to
Tharn. On the morning of his fifth
day on the planet he strode purpos-
ively across the clean, well-cared-for
concrete of the apron, walked de-
cisively up the ramp to Rim Griffon*s
after airlock door. There was a junior
officer waiting there to receive him;
Captain Dingwall had been warned
that he would be coming on board.
Grimes knew the young man, as he
should have done. After all, he had
interviewed him when he had applied
for a berth in the Rim Runners’
service.

“Good morning, Mr. Taylor.”

“Good morning, sir.” The third
officer was painfully nervous, and
his prominent Adam’s apple hobbled
as he spoke. His ears, almost as
outstanding as Grime’s own, flushed
a dull red. “The Old ...” The
flush spread to all of Taylor’s fea-
tures. “The master is waiting for
you, sir. This way, sir.”

Grimes did not need a guide. This
Rim Griffon, like most of the older
units in Rim Runners’ fleet, had
started her career as an Epsilon Class
tramp in the employ of the Inter-
stellar Transport Commission. The
general layout of those tried and
trusted galactic workhorses was famil-
iar to all spacemen. However, young
Mr. Tayor had been instructed by his
captain to receive the commodore
and to escort him to his, Dingwall’s,
<1

quarters, and Grimes had no desire
to interfere with the running of the
ship.

Yet.

The two men rode up in the ele-
vator in silence, each immersed in his
own thoughts. Taylor, obviously, was
apprehensive. A delay to a vessel is
always a serious matter, especially
when her own officers are involved.
And Grimes was sorting out his own
impressions to date. This Rim Grif-
fon was obviously not a happy ship.
He could feel it — just as he could
see and hear the faint yet unmis-
takable signs of neglect, die hints of
rust and dust, the not yet anguished
pleading of a machine somewhere,
a fan or a pump, for lubrication. And
as the elevator cage passed through
the “farm” level there was a whiff
of decaying vegetation; either algae
vats or hydroponic tanks — or both
— were overdue for cleaning out.

The elevator stopped at the Cap-
tain’s Deck. Young Mr. Tayor led
the way out of the cage, knocked
diffidently at the door facing that
into the axial shaft. It did open. A
deep voice said, “That will be all,
Mr. Taylor. I’ll send for you and the
other officers when I want you. And
come in, please, Commodore
Grimes.”

Grimes entered the day cabin.

Dingwall rose to meet him — a
short, stocky man, his features too
large, too ruddy, to eyes too brilli-
antly blue under a cockatoo-crest of
white hair. He extended a hand, say-
ing, “Welcome aboard. Commodore.”
He did not manage to make the
greeting sound convincing. “Sit down.

136

sir. The sun^s not yet over the yard-
arm, but I can offer you coffee.”

“No thank you, Captain. Later,
perhaps. Mind if I smoke?” Grimes
produced his battered pipe, filled and
lit it. He said through the initial acrid
cloud, “And now, sir, what is the
trouble? Your ship h^s been held up
for far too long.”

“You should have asked me that
five days ago, Commodore.”

“Should I?” Grimes stared at Ding-
wall, his gray eyes bleak. “Perhaps
I should. Unfortunately I was obliged
to act almost in an ambassadorial ca-
pacity after I arrived here. But now
I am free to attend to the real busi-
ness.”

“It’s my officers,” blurted Ding-
wall.

“Yes?”

“The second mate to begin with.
A bird-brained navigator if ever there
was one. Can you imagine anybody,
with all the aids we have today, get-
ting lost between Stree and Mellise?
He did.”

“Legally speaking,” said Grimes,
“the master is responsible for every-
thing. Including the navigation of his
ship.”

“I navigate myself. Now.”

And I can imagine it, thought
Grimes. “Do I have to do every-
body*s bloody job in this bloody ship?
Of course, Fm only the captain . . .
He said, “You reprimanded him, of
course?”

“Too right I did.” Dingwall’s
voice registered pleasant remini-
scence. “I told him that he was in-
capable of navigating a plastic duck
across a bathtub.”

“Hmm. And your other officers?”

“There’re the engineers. Commo-
dore. The interstellar drive chief hates
the inertial drive chief. Not that I’ve
much time for either of ’em. In fact
I told Willis — he’s supposed to run
the inertial drive — that he couldn’t
pull a soldier off his sister. That was
after I almost had to use the auxiliary
rockets to get clear of Grollor . . . .”
“And the others?”

“Vacchini, my mate. He couldn’t
run a pie cart. And Sally Bowen, the
catering officer, can’t boil water
without burning it. And Pilchin, the
so-called purser, can’t add two and
two and get the same answer twice
running. And as for Sparks ... I’d
stand a better chance of getting an
important message through if I just
opened a control viewport and stood
there and shouted.”

The officer who is to blame for
all this, thought Grimes, is the doctor.
He should have seen this coming on.
But perhaps Vm to blame as well,
DingwalVs home port is Port Forlorn,
on Lorn — and his ship^s been run-
ning between the worldfs of the East-
ern Circuit and Port Farewell, on
Faraway, for the past nine standard
months. And Mrs, Dingwall (Grimes
had met her) is too fond of her social
life to travel with him ....

“Don’t you like the ship. Captain?”
he asked.

“The ship's all right,” he was told
sarcastically.

“But the run, as far as you’re con-
cerned, could be better?”

“And the officers.”

“Couldn’t we all. Captain Ding-
wall? Couldn’t we all? And now, just
between ourselves, who is it that re-
fuses to sail with you?”

THE BIRD-BRAINED NAVIGATOR

137

“My bird-brained navigator. I
hurt his feelings when I called him
that. A very sensitive young man is
our Mr. Missenden. And the inertial
drive chief. He’s a member of some
fancy religion called the Neo-Cal-
vinists.”

“I’ve met them,” said Grimes.

“What 1 said about his sister and
the soldier really shocked him.”

“And which of them refuse to sail
with the other?”

“Almost everybody has it in for
the second mate. He’s a Latter Day
Fascist and is always trying to make
converts. And the two chiefs are at
each other’s throat Kerholm, the
interstellar drive specialist, is a mili-
tant atheist . . . . ”

And I was on my annual leave,
thought Grimes, when this prize
bunch of square pegs was appointed
to this round hole. Even so, I should
have checked up.

“Captain,” he said, “I appreciate
your problems. But there are two
sides to every story. Mr. Vacchini,
for example, is a very efficient of-
ficer. As far as he is concerned, there
could well be a clash of personali-
ties.”

“Perhaps,” admitted Dingwall
grudgingly.

“As for the others, I don’t know
them personally. If you could tell
them all to meet .in the wardroom in
— say — five minutes, we can go
down to try to iron some of these
things out.”

“Fom can try,” said the captain.
“I’ve had them all in a big way. And,
to save you the bother of saying it.
Commodore Grimes, they’ve had me
likewise.”

Grimes ironed things out. On his
way from Lorn to Tharn he had
studied the files of reports on the
captain and his officers. In other cir-
cumstances he would have been quite
ruthless — but good spacemen do not
grow on trees, especially out towards
the Galactic Rim. And these were
good spacemen, all of them — with
the exception of Missenden, the sec-
ond officer. He had been born on
New Saxony, one of the worlds that
had been part of the short-lived
Duchy of Waldegren, and one of the
worlds upon which the political per-
versions practiced upon Waldegren
itself had lived on for years after the
downfall of the Duchy. He had been
an officer in the navy of New Saxony
and had taken part in the action off
Pelisande, the battle in which the
heavy cruisers of the Survey Service
had destroyed the last of the self-
styled commerce raiders who were,
in fact, no better than pirates. ^
There had been survivors, and
Missenden had been one of them.
(He owed his survival mainly to the
circumstance that the ship of which
he had been navigator had been late
in arriving at her rendezvous with the
other New Saxony war vessels and
had, in fact, surrendered after no
more than a token resistance.) He
had stood trial with other war crimin-
als, but had escaped with a very light
sentence. (Most of the witnesses who
could have testified against him were
dead.) As he had held a lieutenant
commander’s commission in the nayy
of New Saxony he had been able to
obtain a Master Astronaut’s Certifi-

138

cate after no more than the merest
apology for an examination. Then
he had drifted out to the Rim, where
his New Saxony qualifications were
valid — where, in fact, qualifications
issued by any human authority any-
where in the galaxy were valid.

Grimes looked at Missenden. He
did not like what he saw. He had not
liked it when He first met the man,
a few years ago, when he had en-
gaged him as a probationary third
officer — but then, as now, he had
not been able to afford to turn space-
men away from his office door. The
second officer was tall, with a jutting,
arrogant beak of a nose over a wide,
thin-lipped mouth, with blue eyes
that looked even madder than Cap-
tain Dingwall’s, his pale, freckled
face topped by close-cropped red
hair. He was a fanatic, that was ob-
vious from his physical appearance.
And in a ship -where he, like every-
body else, was unhappy, his fanaticism
would be enhanced. A lean and hun-
gry look, thought Grimes. He thinks
too much; such men are dangerous.
He added mentally, But only when
they think about the wrong things.
The late Duke Otto*s Galactic Super-
man, for example, rather than PiU
gren*s Principles of Interstellar Navi-
gation,

He said, ‘‘Mr. Missenden.”

“Sir?” The curtly snapped word
was almost an insult. The way in
which it was said implied, “Fm ac-
cording respect to your rank, not
to youJ*

“The other officers have agreed to
Continue the voyage. On arrival at
Port Forlorn you will all be trans-
ferred to more suitable ships, and

those of you who are due will be
sent on leave or time off as soon as
possible. Are you agreeable?”

“No.”

“And why not, Mr. Missenden?”
“I’m not prepared to make an
intercontinental hop under a captain
who insulted me.”

“Insulted you?”

“Yes.” He turned on Dingwall.
“Did you, or did you not, call me
a bird-brained navigator?”

“I did, Mr. Missenden,” snarled
Captain Dingwall. “And I meant it.”
“Captain,” asked Grimes patiently,
“are you prepared to withdraw that
remark?”

“I am not. Commodore. Further-
more, as master of this ship I have
the legal right to discharge any mem-
ber of my crew anywhere that I see
fit.”

“Very well,” said Grimes. “As
Captain Dingwall has pdnted out I
can only advise and mediate. But I
do possess some authority; appoint-
ments and transfers are my responsi-
bility. Will you arrange, Captain, for
Mr. Missenden to be paid, on your
books, up to and including midnight,
local time? Then get him off your
Articles of Agreement as soon as
possible, so that the second officer
of Rim Dragon can be signed on here.
And you, Mr. Missenden, will join
Rim Dragon,”

“If you say so,” said Missenden.
“Sir.”

“I do say so. And I say, too, Mr.
Missenden, that I shall see you again
in my office back in Port Forlorn.”
“I can hardly wait Sir.”

Captain Dingwall looked at his
watch. He said, “The purser already

THE BIRO-BRAINED NAVIGATOR

139

has Mr. Missenden’s payoff almost
finalized. Have you made any ar^
rangements with Captain Wenderby
regarding his second officer?”

told him that there might be a
transfer, Captain. Shall we meet at
the consul’s office at 1500 hours?
You probably already know that he
is empowered to act as shipping
master insofar as our ships on Tharn
are concerned.”

“Yes, sir,” stated Dingwall. “I
know.”

“You would,” muttered Missen-
den.

The transfer of officers was nice
and easy in theory — but it did not
work out in practice. The purser.
Grimes afterwards learned, was the
only person aboard Rim Griffon with
whom the second officer was not on
terms of acute enmity. Missenden
persuaded him to arrange his pay-
off for 1400 hours, not 1500. At the
appointed time the purser of the
Griffon was waiting in the consul’s
office, and shortly afterwards the
purser and the second officer of Rim
Dragon put in their appearance. The
Dragon's second mate was paid off
his old ship and signed on the articles
of his new one. But Missenden had
vanished. All that Griffon's purser
knew was that he had taken the
money due him and said that he had
to make a business call and that hQ
would be back.

He did not come back.

Commodore Grimes was not in a
happy mood. He had hoped to
be a passenger aboard Rim Griffon
when she lifted off from Port Grimes,
but now it seemed that his departure

from Tharn for the Rim Worlds
would have to be indefinitely post-
poned.

It was, of course, all Missenden’s
fault. Now that he had gone into
smoke, all sorts of unsavory facts
were coming to light regarding that
officer. During his ship’s visits to
Tharn he had made contact with
various subversive elements. The
consul had not known of this — but
Rim Runners’ local agent, a native
to the planet, had. It was the police
who had told him, and he had passed
the information on to Captain Ding-
wall. Dingwall had shrugged and
growled, “What the hell else do you
expect from such a drongo?” adding,
“As long as I get shut of the bastard
he can consort with Aldebaranian
necrophiles for airi carel”

Quite suddenly, with Grimes’s
baggage already loaded aboard Rim
Griffon, the mess had blown up to
the proportions of an interstellar in-
cident. The Port Grimes Customs re-
fused outward clearance to the ship.
The Rim Confederacy’s ambassador
sent an urgent message to Grimes
requiring him to disembark at once
— after which the ship would be
permitted to leave — and to report
forthwith to the Embassy. With all
this happening, Grimes was in no
fit state to listen to Captain Wender-
by’s complaints that he had lost a
first class second officer and now
would have to sail short-handed on
completion of discharge.

The ambassador’s own car took
Grimes from the spaceport to the
Embassy. It was a large building,
ornately turreted, with metal-bound
doors that could have withstood the

140

charge of a medium tank. These
opened as the commodore dismount-
ed from the vehicle, and within them
stood saluting Marines. At least,
thought Grimes, they aren't going to
shoot me. Yet. An aide in civilian
clothes escorted him to the ambassa-
dor’s office.

The Honorable Clifford Webb was
a short, fat man with all of a short,
fat man’s pomposity. “Sit down,
Commodore,” he huffed. Then,
glowering over his wide, highly pol-
ished desk at the spaceman, “Now,
sir. This Missenden character. What
about him? Hey?”

“He seems to have flown the
coop,” said Grimes.

“You amaze me, sir.” Webb’s
glower became even more pronounc-
ed. “You amaze me, sir. Not by what
you said, but by the way in which
70U said it. Surely you, even you have
some appreciation of the seriousness
of the situation?”

“Spacemen have deserted before,
in foreign ports. Just as seamen used
to do. Still do. The local police have
his description. They’ll pick him up
and deport him when they get him.
And we’ll deport him, too, when he’s
delivered back to the Confederacy.”
“And you still don’t think it’s
serious? Hey?”

“Frankly, no, sir.”

“Commodore, you made the first
landing on this planet. But what do
you know about it? Nothing, sir.
Nothing. You haven’t lived here, I
have. I know that the Confederacy
win have to fight to maintain the
currently favorable trade relations
that we still enjoy with Tham. Al-
ready other astronautical powers are

sniffing around the worlds of the
Eastern Circuit . . . . ”

“During the last six months, local
time,” said Grimes, “three of the
Empire of Waverley’s ships have
called here. And two from the
Shakespearean Sector* And one of
Trans-Galactic Qippeis’ cargo liners.
But, as far as the rulers of Tham are
concerned, the Confederacy is still the
most favored nation.”

“Who are the riders of Tharn?”
barked the ambassador,

“Why, the priesthood.”

The ambassador mumbled some-
thing about the political illiteracy of
spacemen, then got to his feet He
waddled to the far wall of his office,
on which was hung a huge map of
the planet in Mercatorial projeciion,
beckoned to Grimes to follow him.
From a rack he took a long pointer.
“The island continent of Ansiphal
. . .” he said. “And here, on the
eastern seaboard, Port Grimes, and
the University City. Where we are
now.”

‘Tfes.”

The tip of the pointer described
a rhumb line, almost due east. “The
other island continent of the northern
hemisphere, almost the twin to this
one. Climatically, politically — you
name it.”

“Yes?”

The pointer backtracked, then
stabbed viciously. “And here, well to
the west of Braziperu, the island of
Tangaroa. Not a continent — but still
a sizeable hunk of real estate.”

“So?”

“So Tangaroa’s the last stronghold
of the robber barons, the ruffians who
were struggling for power with the

THE BIRD-BRAINED NAVIGATOR

141

priests and merchants when you
made your famous first landing. How
many years ago was it? Hey?”

“But what’s that to do with Mr.
Missenden,” Grimes asked. “And
me?” he added.

“Your Mr. Missenden,” the am-
bassador said, “served in the navy
of New Saxony. The people with
whom he’s been mixing in the Uni-
versity City are Tangaroan agents and
sympathizers. The priesthood has al-
low^ Tangaroa to continue to exist
— in fact, there’s even trade between
it and Ausiphal — but has been re-
luctant to allow the Tangaroans ac-
cess to any new knowledge, especial-
ly knowledge that could be perverted
to the manufacture of weaponry.
Your Mr. Missenden would be a veri-
table treasure house of such knowl-
edge.”

“He’s not my Mr. Missenden!”
snapped Grimes.

“But he is, sir. He is. You engaged
him when he came out to the Rim.
You appointed him to ships running
the Eastern Circuit. You engineered
his discharge on this world, even.”

“So what am I supposed to do
about him?”

“Find him, before he does any
real damage. And if you, the man
after whom the spaceport was named,
are successful it will show the High
Priest just how much we, of the Con-
federacy, have the welfare of Tharn
at heart.”

“But why me? These people have
a very efficient police force. And a
man with a pale, freckled face and
red hair wil! stand oift like a sore
thumb among the natives.”

The Honorable Mr. Webb laughed

scornfully. “Green skin dye! Dark
blue hair dye! Contact lenses! And,
on top of all that, a physical appear-
ance that’s common on this planet!”
“Yes,” admitted Grimes. “I might
recognize him, in spite of a dis-
guise . . . .”

“Good. My car is waiting to take
you to the High Priest.”

The university stood on a rise to
the east of the city, overlooking
the broad river and, a few miles to
the north, the sea. It looked more
like a fortress than a seat of learn-
ing — and in Tham’s turbulent past
it had more than once been castle
rather than academy.

Grimes respected the Tharnian
priesthood. The religion that they
preached and practiced made more
sense to him than most of the other
faiths of Man. There was something
of Buddhism about it, a recognition
of the fact that nothing is, but that
everything is flux, change, a contin-
ual process of becoming. There was
the equation of God with Knowledge
— but never that infuriating state-
ment made by so many Terran re-
ligions, that smug “There are things
that we aren’t meant to know.” There
was a very real wisdom — the wis-
dom that accepts and rejects, and
that does neither just because a con-
cept is new. There was a reluctance
to rush headlong into an industrial
revolution, with all its miseries. And,
at the same time, no delay in the
adoption of techniques that would
make the life of the people longer,
easier and happier.

Night had fallen when the em-
bassy car pulled up outside the great

142

gates of the university. The guard
turned out smartly — but in these
days their function was merely cere-
monial; no longer was there the need
either to keep the students in or the
townsfolk out. On all of Tharn —
save for Tangaroa — the robber
barons were only an evil memory of
the past.

A black-uniformed officer led
Grimes through long corridors, lit by
bright electric bulbs, and up stair-
ways to the office of the High Priest.
He, an elderly, black-robed man,
frail, his skin darkened by age to an
opaque olive, had been a young stu-
dent at the time of the first lamiing.
He had claimed to have met the com-
modore on that occasion, but Grimes
could not remember him. But he was
almost the double of the old man
who had held the high office then
— a clear example of the job making
the man.

“Commodore Grimes,” he said.
“Please be seated.”

“Thank you. Your Wisdom.”

“I am sorry to have interfered
with your plans, sir. But your Mr.
Webb insisted.”

“He assured me that it was im-
portant.”

“And he has . . . put you in the
picture?”

“Yes.”

The old man produced a decanter,
two graceful glasses. He poured the
wine. Grimes relaxed. He remember-
ed that the Tharnian priesthood
made a point of never drinking with
anybody whom they considered an
enemy, with nobody who was not a
friend in the true sense of the word.
There was no toast, only a ceremonial

raising of goblets. The liquor was
good, as it always had been.

“^JVTiat can I do?” asked Grimes.
The priest shrugged. “Very little.
I told Mr. Webb that our own police
were quite capable of handling the
situation, but he said, Tt’s his mess.
He shoidd have his nose rubbed in
it.* *’ The old man’s teeth were very
white in his dark face as he smiled.

“Tales out of school, Your Wis-
dom,” grinned Grimes. “Now I’ll
tell one. Mr. Webb doesn’t like space-
men. A few years ago his wife made
a cruise in one of the T-G Clippers.
And when the divorce came through,
she married the chief officer of the
liner she traveled in.”

The High Priest laughed. “That
accounts for it. But I shall enjoy your
company for a few weeks that you
will have to stay on Tharn, I shall
tell my people to bring your baggage
from the embassy over here to the
University.”

“That is very good of you.”
Grimes took another sip of the
strong wine. “But I think that since
I’m here I shall help in the search for
Mr. Missenden. After all, he is still,
officially, one of our nationals.”

“As you please. Commodore. Tell
me, if you were in charge how would
you set about it?”

Grimes lapsed into silence. He
looked around the office. All of the
walls were covered with books, save
one, and on it hung another of those
big maps. He said, “He’ll have to get
out by sea, of course.”

“Of course. We have no commer-
cial airship service to Tangaroa. And
the Tangaroans have no commercial
airship service at all.”

THE BIRD-BRAINED NAVIGATOR

143

Ill

“And you have no submarines yet,
and youritterial coastguard patrol will
keep you informed as to the move-
ments of all surface vessels. So he
will have to make his getaway in a
merchant vessel .... Would you
know if there are any Tangaroan
merchantmen in port?”

“I would know. There is one —
the Kawaroa. She is loading textiles
and all kinds of agricultural machin-
ery.”

“Could she be held for any reason-
able length of time?”

“On what excuse, Commodore?
The Tangaroans are very touchy peo-
ple, and if the ship is detained dieir
consul will at once send off a radio
message to his government.”

“A very touchy people, you say.
And arrogant. And quarrelsome.
Now, just suppose that there’s a
good, old-fashioned tavern brawl, as
a result of which the master and his
officers are all arrested . . • . ”

“It’s the sort of thing that could
easily happen. It has happened, more
than once.”

“Just prior to sailing, shall we
say? And then, with the ship im-
mobilized, with only rather dim-
witted ratings to try to hinder us,
we make a thorough search — ac-
commodation, holds, machinery
spaces, storerooms, the works.”

“The suggestion certainly has its
merits.”

“The only snag,” admitted Grimes,
“is that it’s very unlikely that the
master and all three of his mates will
rush ashore for a quick one just be-
fore sailing.”

“But in this case they always do,”
said the High Priest.

As they always had done, they did.

Grimes watched proceedings
from the innkeeper’s cubbyhole, a
little compartment just above the
mam barroom with cunning peep-
hole in its floor. He would have pre-
ferred to have been among the crowd
of seamen, fishermen and water-
siders, but his rugged face was too
well known on Tharn, and no amount
of hair and skin dye could have dis-
guised him. He watched the four bur-
ly, blue-and-brass clad men breasting
the bar, drinking by themselves, toss-
ing dovm pot after pot of the strong
ale. He saw the fat girl whose dyed
yellow hair was in vivid contrast to
her green skin nuzzle up to the man
who was obviously the Tangaroan
captain. He wanted none of her.
Grimes sympathized with him. Even
from his elevated vantage point he
could see that her exposed, over-
blown breasts were sagging uglily,
that what little there was of her dress
was stained and bedraggled. But the
man need not have brushed her away
so brutally. She squawked like an
indignant parrot as she fell sprawling
to the floor with a display of fat, un-
lovely legs.

One of the other drinkers — a
fisherman by the looks of him —
came to the aid of beauty in distress.
Or perhaps it was only that he was
annoyed because the woman, in her
fall, had jostled him, spilling his
drink. Or, even more likely, both he
and the woman were the High Priest’s
agents. If such were the case, he
seemed to be enjoying his work. His
huge left hand grasped the captain’s

144

shoulder, turning him and holding
him, and then right fist and left knee
worked in unison. It was dirty but
effective.

After that — as Grimes said later,
telling about it — it was on for young
and old. The three mates, swinging
their heavy metal drinking pots, ral-
lied to the defense of their master.
The fisherman picked up a heavy
stool to use as his weapon. The wom-
an, who had scrambled to her feet
with amazing agility for one of her
bulk, sailed into the fray, fell to a
crouching posture and straightened
abruptly, and one of the Tangaroan
officers went sailing over her head as
though rocket-propelled, crashing
down on to a table at which three
watersiders had been enjoying a
quiet, peaceful drink. They, roaring
their displeasure, fell upon the hap-
less foreigner with fists and feet.

The police officer with Grimes —
his English was not too good — said,
“Pity break lip good fight. But must
arrest very soon.”

“You’d better,” the commodore
told him. “Some of those gentry
down there are pulling knives.”

Yes, knives were out, gleaming
wickedly in the lamplight. Knives
were out, but the Tangaroans — with
the exception of the victim of the
lady and her stevedoring friends —
had managed to retreat to a corner
and there were fighting off all com-
ers, although the captain, propped
against the wall, was playing no
great part in the proceedings. Like
the fisherman, the two officers had
picked up stools, were using them
both as shields and weapons, deflect-
ing with them flung pots and bottles.

smashing them doy/n on the heads
and arms of their assailants.

The captain was recovering slowly.
His hand went up to fumble inside
the front of his coat. It came out,
holding something that gleamed
evilly — a pistol. But he fired it
only once, and harmlessly. The weap-
on went off as his finger tightened
on the trigger quite involuntarily, as
the knife thrown by the yellow-haired
slattern pinned his wrist to the wall.

And then the place was full of
University police, tough men in black
tunics who used their clubs quite
indiscrimiliately and herded all those
present out into the waiting trucks.

Quietly, Grimes and the police of-
ficer left their observation post and
went down the back stairs. Outside
the inn they were joined by twelve
men — six police and six ^customs.
These latter were used to searching
ships. Their heels ringing on the
damp cobblestones, they made their
way through the misty night to the
riverside, to the quays.

Kawaroa was ready for sea, await-
ing only the pilot and, of course,
her master and officers. Her derricks
were stowed, her moorings had been
singled up, and a feather of smoke
from her tall, raked funnel showed
that steam had been raised. She was
not a big ship, but she looked smart,
well maintained, seaworthy.

As Grimes and his party approach-
ed the vessel they saw that somebody
had gotten there ahead of them, a
dark figure who clattered hastily up
the gangway. But there was no cause
for hurry. The ship, with all her
navigating officers either in jail or in

THE BIRD-BRAINED NAVIGATOR

145

hospital, would not be sailing, and
the harbor master had already been
told not to send a pilot down to take
her out.

There was no cause for hurry ....

But what was that jangling of bells,
loud and disturbing in the still night?
The engineroom telegraph? The
routine testing of gear one hour be-
fore the time set for departure?

And what were those men doing,
scurrying along to fo’c’s’le head and
poop?

Grimes broke into a run, and as he
did so heard somebody * shouting
from Kawarocfs bridge. The language
was unfamiliar, but the voice was
not. It was Missenden’s. From for-
ward there was a thunk! and then a
splash as the end of the severed
headline fell into the still water. The
last of the flood caught the ship’s
bows and she fell away from the
wharf. With the police and customs
officers, who had belatedly realized
what was happening, well behind him.
Grimes reached the edge of the quay.
It was all of five feet to the end of
the still-dangling gangway and the
gap was rapidly widening. \Wthout
thinking. Grimes jumped. Had he
known that nobody would follow him
he would never have done so. But
he jumped, and his desperate fingers
closed around the outboard manropes
of the accommodation ladder and
somehow, paying a heavy toll of
abrasions and lacerations he was able
to squirm upwards uptil he was
kneeling on the bottom platform.
Dimly he was aware of shouts from
the fast receding quayside. Again he
heard the engineroom telegraph bells
and felt the vibration as the screw

began to turn. So the after lines had
been cut, too, and the ship was un-
der way. And it was — he remem-
bered the charts that he had looked
at — a straight run down river with
absolutely no need for local knowl-
edge. From above sounded a single,
derisory blast from Kawawa's steam
whistle.

Grimes was tempted to drop from
his perch, to swim back ashore. But
he knew too much. He had always
been a student of maritime history
in all its aspects. He knew that a
man going overboard from a ship
making way through the water stands
a very good chance of being pulled
under and then cut to pieces by the
screw. In any case, he had said that
he would find Missenden, and he
had done just that.

Slowly, painfuly he pulled himself
erect, then walked slowly up the
clattering treads to deck level.

There was nobody on deck to re-
ceive him. This was not surpris-
ing; Missenden and the crew must
have been too engrossed in getting
away from the wharf to notice his
literal pierhead jump. So .... He
was standing in an alleyway, open
on the pdrt side. Looking out, he
saw the seaport lights sliding past,
and ahead and on to port there was
the white-flashing fairway buoy al-
ready — dim, but from mist rather
than distance. Inboard there was a
varnished wooden door set in the
white-painted plating of the ’mid-
ships house, obviously the entrance
to the accommodation.

Grimes opened it without difficul-
ty — door-handles will be invented

146

and used by any being approximating
to human structure. Inside there was
a cross alleyway, brightly illuminated
by electric hght bulbs in well fittings.
On the after bulkhead of this there
was a steel door, and the mechanical
hum and whine that came behind it
told Grimes that it led to the engine-
room. On the forward bulkhead there
was another wooden door.

Grimes went through it. Another
alleyway, cabins, and a companion-
way lea^ng upwards. At the top of
this there were more cabins, and an-
other companionway. And at the top
of this ... the master’s accommoda-
tion, obviously, even though the word
on the tally over the door was no
more than a meaningless squiggle to
Grimes.

One more companionway — this
one with a functional handrail in-
stead of a relatively ornate balustrade.
At the head of it was a curtained
doorway. Grimes pushed through the
heavy ^ape, found himself in what
could be the chartroom, looked brief-
ly at the wide chart table upon which
was a plan of the harbor, together
with a pair of dividers and a set of
parallel rulers. The Confederacy, he
remembered, had at one time ex-
ported quite large consignments of
these instruments to Tham.

^ On the forward bulkhead of the
chartroom, and to port, was the door-
way leading out to the wheelhouse
and bridge. Softly, Grimes stepped
through it, out into near darlmess.
The only light was that showing
from the compass periscope, the de-
vice that enabled the helmsman to
steer by the standard magnetic com-
pass, the binnacle of which was sited

up yet one more deck, on what
had been called on Earth’s surface
ships the “monkey island.” There
was the man at the wheel, intent up-
on his job. And there, at the fore
end of the wheelhouse, were two
dark figures, looking out through the
wide windows. One of them, the tall-
er one, turned suddenly, said some-
thing in Tangaroan. As before, the
voice was familiar but the language
was not.

The question — intonation made
that plain — was repeated, and then
Missenden said in English, “It’s you!
How the hell did you get aboard?
Hold it. Commodore, hold it!” There
was just enough light for Grimes to
see the pistol that was pointing at his
midriff.

“Turn this ship round,” ordered
Grimes, “and take her back into
port.”

“Not bloody likely.” Missenden
laughed. “Especially when I’ve gone
to all trouble of taking her out of
port. Pity old Dingwall wasn’t here
to see it. Not bad, was it, for a bird-
brained navigator? And keep your
hands up, where I can see them.”^

“I’m unarmed,” said Grimes.

“I’ve only your word for it,” Miss-
enden told him. Then he said some-
thing to his companion, who replied
in what, in happier circumstances,
would have been a very pleasant con-
tralto. The girl produced a mouth
whistle, blew a piercing blast. In
seconds two burly seamen had ap-
peared on the bridge. They grabbed
Grimes and held him tightly while
she ran practiced hands over his
clothing. It was not the first time
that she had searched a man for

THE BIRD-BRAINED NAVIGATOR

147

^e^ons. Then they dragged him be-
low, unlocked a steel door and threw
him into the tiny compartment be-
yond it. The heavily barred port
n^de it obvious that it was the ship’s
brig.

They locked him in and left him
there.

Grimes examined his surroundings
by the light of the single, dim bulb.
Deck, deckhead and bulkheads were
all of steel. But had they been of
plyboard it would have made no
difference; that blasted girl had taken
from him the only possession that
could possibly have been used as a
weapon, his pocketknife. There was
a steel-framed bunk, with a thin
mattress and one sleazy blanket.
There was a stained washbasin, and
a single faucet which, when persuad-
ed, emitted a trickle of rusty water.
There was a bucket — plastic, not
metal. Still, it could have been worse.
He could sleep — perhaps — and
he would not die of thirst. Fully
clothed, he lay down on the bunk.
He realized that he was physically
tired; his desperate leap for the
gangway had taken something out of
him. And the ship was moving gent-
ly now, a slight, soporific roll, and
the steady hum and vibration of the
turbines helped further to induce
slumber. There was nothing he could
do, absolutely nothing, and to lose
valuable sleep by useless worry would
have been foolish.

He slept.

It was the girl who awakened him.
She stood there, bending over him.

shaking his shoulder. When he stirred
she stepped sharply back. She was
holding a pistol, a revolver of Tirran
design if not manufacture, and she
looked as though she knew how to
use it. She was one of those women
whose beauty is somehow accentu-
ated by juxtaposition to lethal iron-
mongery. Yes, she was an attractive
wench, with her greenish, transluscent
skin that did not look at all odd, with
her fine, strong features, with her
sleek, short-cut blue hair, with her
slim yet rounded figure that even the
rough uniform could not hide. She
was an officer of some sort, although
what the silver braid on the sleeves
of her tunic signified Grimes could
not guess. Not that he felt in the
mood for guessing games; he was too
conscious of his own unshaven scruf-
finess, of the aches and pains result-
ing from his athletics of the previous
night and from the hardness of the
mattress.

She said, in fair enough English,
“Your Mr. Missenden would see
you.”

“He’s not my Mr. Missenden,” re-
plied Grimes, testily. Why should
everybody ascribe to him the owner-
ship of the late second officer of
Rim Dragon?

“Come,” she said, making an up-
ward jerking motion of the pistol
barrel.

“All right,” grumbled Grimes. “All
right.”

He rolled off the narrow bunk,
staggered slightly as he made his
way to the washbasin. He splashed
water over his face, drank some
from his cupped hands. There was
no towel. He made do with his hand-

kerchief. As he was drying himself
he saw that the door was open and
that a seaman was standing beyond
it. Any thoughts that he had enter-
tained of jumping the girl and seizing
her gun — if he could — evaporated.

“Follow that man,” she ordered.
“I will follow you.”

Grimes followed the man, through
alleyways and up companionways.
They came at last to the bridge.
Missenden was there, striding briskly
back and forth as though he had been
at sea all his life. In the wheelhouse
the helmsman was intent on his task.
Grimes noted that the standard com-
pass periscope had been withdrawn
and that the man was concentrating
upon the binnacle housing the ocean
passage compass. So they still used
that system. But why shouldn’t they?
It was a good one. He looked out to
the sea, up to the sky. The morning
was calm, but the sun was hidden by
a thick, anticyclonic overcast. The
surface of the sea was only slightly
ruffled and there was a low, confused
swell.

“Missenden,” called the girl.
Missenden stopped his pacing,
walked slowly to the wheelhouse.
With his dyed hair and skin he looked
like a Tharnian, a Tangaroan, and
in his borrowed uniform he looked
like a seaman. He also looked very
pleased with himself.

“Ah, Commodore,” he said, “wel-
come aboard. You’ve met Miss El-
levie, I think. Our radio officer.”
“You’d better tell Miss Ellevie to
send a message to the High Priest
for me, Mr. Missenden.”

Missenden laughed harshly. “I’ll
say this for you. Commodore, you do

go on trying. Why not accept the in-
evitable? You’re in Tangaroan hands.
In fact you put yourself in their
— our — hands. The Council of
Barons has already been informed,
and they have told me that they want
you alive. If possible.”

“Why?” asked Grimes bluntly.
“Use your loaf. Commodore. First-
ly, it’s possible that we may be able
to persuade you to press for the es-
tablishment of trade relations be-
tween the Confederacy and Tangaroa.
You do pile on quite a few G’s in
this sector of the galaxy, you know.
Or should I say that you do draw a
lot of water? And if you play, it
could be well worth your while.”
“And if I don’t play?”

“Then we shall be willing to sell
you back to your lords and masters.
At a fair price, of course. A squad-
ron of armed atmosphere flyers?
Laser weapons? Missiles with nuclear
warheads?”

“That’s for your lords and masters
to decide.”

Missenden flushed, and the effect,
with his green-dyed skin, was an
odd one. He said to the girl, “That
will do, Ellevie. I’ll let you know
when I want you again.” He walked
out to the wing of the bridge, beckon-
ing Grimes to follow. When he turn-
ed to face the commodore he was
holding a pistol in his right hand.

He said, “Don’t try anything.

When I was in the navy of New
Saxony I was expert in the use of
hand guns of all descriptions. But
I’d like a private talk. Ellevie knows
English, so I sent her below. The
man at the wheel may have a smatter-

150

ing, but he’ll not overhear from
where we are now.”

“Well?” asked Grimes coldly.
“We’re both Earthmen.”

“/ am, Mr. Missenden.”

“And I am, by ancestry. These
Thamians are an inferior breed, but
if they see that you can be humili-
ated . . . .”

“. . . they’ll realize that you aren’t
the galactic superman you set your-
self up to be.”

Missenden ignored this, but with
an effort. He said, “My position in
this ship is rather . . . precarious.
The crew doesn’t trust me. I’m cap-
tain, yes — but only because I’m the
only man who can navigate.”

“But can you?”

“Yes, damn you! I’ve read the
textbooks — it was all the bastards
gave me to read when I was holed
up down in the secret compartment.
And anybody who can navigate a
starship can navigate one of these
hookers! Anyhow .... Anyhow,
Commodore, it will be better for
both of us if we maintain the pre-
tense that you are a guest rather
than a prisoner. But I must have
your parole.”

“My parole? What can I do?”
“I’ve heard stories about you.”
“Have you? Very well, then, what
about this? I give you my word not
to attempt to seize this ship.”

“Good. But not good enough. And
will you give your word not to signal,
to aircraft or surface vessels?”

“Yes,” agreed Grimes.

“And your word not to interfere,
in any way, with the ship’s signalling
equipment?”

“Yes.”

“Then, Commodore, I feel that we
may enjoy quite a pleasant cruise. I
can’t take you down yet; I relieved
the lookout for his breakfast. You’ll
appreciate that we’re rather short-
handed. As well as the Old Man and
the three mates, half the deck crew
was left ashore, and two of the en-
gineers. I can’t be up here all the
time, but I have to be here most of
the time. And the lookouts have or-
ders to call me at once if they sight
another ship or an aircraft.”

“And, as you say, you’re the only
navigator.” The only human naviga-
tor, Grimes amended mentally.

The lookout came back to the
bridge then, and Missenden took
Grimes down to what was to be his
cabin.

It was a spare room, with its
own attached toilet facilities, on the
same deck as the master’s suite —
which, of course, was now occupied
by Missenden. It was comfortable,
and the shower worked, and there
was even a tube of imported depila-
tory cream for Grimes to use. After
he had cleaned up he accompanied
Missenden down to the saloon, a
rather gloomy place panelled in dark,
unpolished timber. Ellevie was al-
ready seated at one end of the long
table, and half way along it was an
officer who had to be an engineer.
Missenden took his seat at the head
of the board, motioned to Grimes to
sit at his right. A steward brought in
cups and a pot of some steaming,
aromatic brew, returning with what
looked like, and tasted like, two deep
l>lates of fish stew.

But it wasn’t bad and, in any case,
it was all that there was.

151

THE BIRD-BRAINED NAVIGATOR

After the meal Missenden returned
to the bridge. Grimes accom-
panied him, followed him into the
chartroom where he started to potter
with the things on the chart table.
Grimes looked at the chart — a small
scale oceanic one. He noted that the
Great Circle track was penciled on it,
that neat crosses marked the plotting
of dead reckoning positions at four-
hourly intervals. He looked from it
to the ticking log clock on the for-
ward bulkhead. He asked, “This sub-
merged log of yours. Does it run
fast or slow?”

“I — I don’t know, Commodore.
But if the sky clears and I get some
sights. I’ll soon find out.”

“You think you’ll be able to?”
“Yes. I’ve always been good with
languages, and I’ve picked up enough
Tangaroan to be able to find my way
through the ephemeris and the re-
duction tables.”

“Hmm.” Grimes looked at the
aneroid barometer — another import.
It was still high. With any luck at
all the anticyclonic gloom would
persist for the entire passage. In any
case, he doubted if Missenden’s first
attempt to obtain a fix with sextant
and chronometer would be successful.

He asked, “Do you mind if I have
a look round the ship? As you know,
I'm something of an authority on the
history of marine transport . . .

“I do mind!” snapped Missenden.
Then he laughed abruptly. “But what
could you do? Even if you hadn’t
given your parole, what could you
do? All the same, I’ll send Ellevie
with you. And I warn you, that gi^I
is liable to be trigger happy.”

“Have you known her long?”

Missenden scowled. “Too long.
She’s the main reason why I’m here.”

Yes, thought Grimes, the radio of-
ficer of a merchant vessel is well
qualified for secret service work, and
when the radio officer is also an
attractive woman . . • . He felt sorry
for Missenden, but only briefly. He’d
had his fun; now he was paying for
it.

Missenden went down with Grimes
to the officers’ flat, found Ellevie in
her room. She got up from her chair
without any great enthusiasm, took
from a drawer in her desk a revolver,
thrust it into the side pocket of her
tunic. “I’ll leave you to it,” said Miss-
enden.

“All right,” she said in a flat voice.
Then, to Grimes, “What do you want
to see?”

“I was on this world years ago,”
he told her.

“I know,”

“And I was particularly impressed
by the . . . the ocean passage com-
passes you had, even then, in your
ships. Of course, it was all sail in
those days.”

“Were you?”

Grimes started pouring on the
charm. “No other race in the galaxy
has invented such ingenious instru-
ments.”

“No?” She was beginning to show
a flicker of interest. “And did you
know. Commodore Grimes, that it
was not a wonderful priest who made
the first one? No. It was not. It was
a Baron Lennardi, one of my an-
cestors. He was — how do you put
it? A man who hunts with birds?”

“A falconer.”

“A falconer?” she repeated dubi-

152

cusly. “No matter. He had never
been to the University, but he had
clever artisans in his castle, and his
brother, whom he loved, was a . . .
how do you say sea raider?”

“A pirate.”

She took a key from a hook by the
side of her desk. “Second mate looks
after compass,” she said. “But sec-
ond mate not here. So . . . I do
everything.”

She led the way out into the alley-
way, then to a locked door at
the forward end of the officers’ ac-
commodation, to a room exactly on
the centerline of the ship, directly
below the wheelhouse. She unlocked
and opened the door, hooked it back.
From inside came an ammoniacal
odor. In the center of the deck was
a cage, and in the cage was a bird —
a big, ugly creature, dull gray in col-
or, with ruffled plumage. It was ob-
vious that its wings had been brutally
amputated rather than merely clip-
ped, Its almost globular body was
imprisoned in a metallic harness, and
from this cage within a cage a thin
yet rigid shaft ran directly upwards,
through the deckhead and. Grimes
knew, through a casing in the mas-
ter’s day cabin and, finally, to the
card of the ocean passage compass.
As Grimes watched, Ellevie took a
bottle of water from a rack poured
some into a little trough that formed
part of the harness. Then from a
box she took a spoonful of some
stinking brown powder, added it to
the water. The bird ignored her. It
seemed to be looking at something,
for something, something beyond the
steel bulkhead that was its only hori-

zon, something beyond the real hori-
zon that lay forward and outside of
the metal wall. Its scaly feet scrabbled
on the deck as it made a minor ad-
justment of course.

And it — or its forebears — had
been the only compasses when
Grimes had first come to this planet.
Even though the Earthmen had in-
troduced the magnetic compass and
the gyro compass this, for an ocean
passage, was still the most efficient.

Cruelty to animals is penalized
only when commercial interests are
not involved.

“And your spares?” asked Grimes.

“Homeward spare — right for-
ward,” she told him. “Ausiphal com-
pass and one spare — right aft.”

“So you don’t get them mixed?”
he suggested.

She smiled contemptuously. “No
danger of that.”

“Can I see them?”

“Why not? May as well feed them
now.”

She almost pushed Grimes out of
the master compass room, followed
him and locked the door. She led
the way to the poop — but Grimes
noticed that a couple of unpleasant-
looking seamen tailed after him.
Even though the word had been
passed that he had given his parole
he was not trusted.

The Ausiphal birds were in a cage
in the poop house. As was the ease
with the Tangaroa birds, their wings
had been amputated. Both of them
were staring dejectedly directly astern.
And both of them — even though
dull and ruffled their plumage glowed
with gold and scarlet — were fe-
males.

THE BIRD-BRAINED NAVIGATOR

153

Grimes followed Ellevie into the
cage, the door to which was at the
forward end of the structure. He
made a pretense of watching interest-
edly as she doled out the water and
the odoriferous powder — and pick-
ed up two golden tail feathers from
the filthy deck. She straightened and
turned abruptly. “What you want
those for?”

“Flies,” he lied inspiredly. “Dry
flies.”

“Flies?”

“They’re artificial lures, actually.
Bait. Used for fishing.”

“Nets,” she stated. “Or explo-
sives.”

“Not for sport. We use a rod, and
a line on the end of it, and the hook
and the bait on the end of that And
fishermen are always experimenting
with different baits.”

The suspicion faded from her face.
“Yes, I remember. Missenden gave
me a book — a magazine? It was
all about outdoor sports. But this
fishing .... Crazyl”

“Other people have said it, too.
But I’d just like to see what sort of
flies I can tie with these feathers
when I get home.”

“If you get home,” she said nastily.

Back in his cabin. Grimes went
over mentally what he had learn-
ed about the homers — that was as
good a translation as any of their
native name — during his last (his
only, until now) visit to Tham. They
were land birds, but fared far out to
sea in search of their food, which
was fish. They always found their

way back to their nests, even when
blown thousands of miles away by
severe storms, their powers of eMur-
ance being phenomenal. Also, when-
ever hurt or frightened, they headed
unerringly for home — by the short-
est possible route, which was a Great
Circle course.

Used as master compasses, they
kept the arrowhead on the card of
the steering compass pointed directly
towards wherever it was that they
had been bom — even when that
“wherever” was a breeding pen in
one of the seaport towns. On a Mer-
catorial chart the track would be a
curve, and according to a magnetic
or gyro compass the ship would be
continually changing course — but
on a globe a Great Circle is the short-
est distance between two points.

Only one instinct did they possess
that was more powerful, more over-
riding than the homing instinct.

The sex instinct.

Grimes had given his parole.

Grimes had promised not to do
certain things — and those things,
he knew, were rather beyond his
present capabilities in any case. But
Grimes, as one disgruntled Rini Run-
ners’ master had once remarked, was
a stubborn old bastard. And Grimes,
as the admiral commanding the navy
of the Rim Worlds Confederacy had
once remarked, was a cunning old
bastard. Sonya, his wife, had laughed
when told of these two descriptions
of her husband and had laughed still
louder when he had said plaintively
that he didn’t like to be called old.

Nonetheless, he was getting past
the age for cloak and dagger work.

154

mutiny on the high seas and all the
rest of it. But he could still use his
brains.

Kawaroa*s short-handedness was a
help. If the ship had been normally
manned he would have foimd it hard,
if not impossible, to carry out his
plan. But, insofar as the officers* flat
was concerned, the two engineers
were on watch and watch, and off
watch would be catching up on lost
sleep. That left Ellevie. But she had
watches to keep, and one of these
two-hour stretches of duty coincided
with and overlapped evening twilight.
Missenden was not a watchkeeper,
but he was, as he was always saying,
the only navigator, and on this eve-
ning there seemed to be the possibili-
ty of breaks appearing in the over-
cast. There had been one or two dur-
ing the day, but never where the sun
happened to be. And, insofar as eve-
ning stars were concerned, out here,
on the Rim, there were so very few.
On a clear evening there would have
been three, and three only, suitably
placed for obtaining a fix. On this
night the odds were against even one
of the three appearing in a rift in the
clouds before the horizon was gone.

Anyhow, there was Missenden, on
the bridge, sextant in hand, the lid of
the chronometer box in the chart-
room open, making an occasional
gallop from one wing to the other
when it seemed that a star might
make a fleeting appearance. Grimes
asked if he might help, if he could
take the navigator’s times for him.
Missenden said no, adding that the
wrong times would be no help at all.
Grimes looked hurt, went down to
the boat deck, strolled aft. The radio

shack was abaft the funnel. He look-
ed in, just to make sure that Ellevie
was there. She was, and she was tap-
ping out a message to somebody.
Grimes tried to read it — then rea-
lized that even if the code was Morse
the text would be in Tangaroan.

He went down to the officers’ flat.
All lights, with the exception of the
dim police bulbs in the alleyways,
were out. From one of the cabins
came the sound of snoring. He found
Ellevie’s room without any trouble;
he had been careful to memorize the
squiggle over her door that meant
Radio Officer, He walked to the desk,
put his hand along the side of it.
Yes, the key was there. Or a key.
But it was the only one. He lifted it
from its hook, stepped back into the
alleyway, made his way forward.

Yes, it was the right key. He open-
ed the door, shut it behind him, then
groped for the light switch. The
maimed, ugly bird ignored him; it was
still straining at its harness, still
scrabbling now and again at the deck
as it made some infinitesimal adjust-
ment of course. It ignored him —
until he pulled one of thp female’s
tail feathers from his pocket. It
squawked loudly then, its head turn-
ing on its neck to point at the new,
potent attraction, its clumsy body
straining to follow. But Grimes was
quick. His arm, his hand holding the
feather shot out, steadied over the
brass strip let into the deck that
marked the ship’s centerline.

But it had been close, and he had
been stupid. The man at the wheel
would have noticed if the compass
card had suddenly swung a full ninety
degrees to starboard — and even

THE BIRD-BRAINED NAVIGATOR

155

^ssenden would have noticed if the
ship had followed suit. (And would
he notice the discrepancies between
magnetic compass and ocean passage
compass? Did he ever compare com-
passes? Probably not. According to
Captain Dingwall he was the sort of
navigator who takes far too much
for granted.)

Grimes, before Missenden had or-
dered him off the bridge, had been
able to study the chart. He assumed
— he had to assume — that the last
Dead Reckoning position was reason-
ably accurate. In that case, if the
ship flew off at a tangent, as it were,
from her Great Circle, if, as and
from now she followed a rhumb line,
she would miss the north coast of
Tangaroa by all of a hundred miles.
And if she missed that coast, another
day’s steaming would bring her into
the territorial waters of Braziperu.
There was probably some sort of
coastal patrol, and even though sur-
face and airships would not be look-
ing for Kawaroa her description
would have been sent out.

The rack containing water and
food containers was on the forward
bulkhead of the master compass
room. It was secured to the plating
with screws, and between wood and
metal there was a gap. Grimes push-
ed the quill of the feather into this
crack, being careful to keep it exactly
over the brass lubber’s line. He re-
membered that the male homer had
paid no attention to the not-so-artifi-
cial lure until he pulled it out of his
pocket. Had his own body masked
the smell of it? Or was there a smell,
or was it some more subtle emana-
tion? He recalled then that he had

learned that the male birds must be
kept beyond a minimum distance
from the females, no matter what in-
tervened in the way of decks or bulk-
heads. So ... ? His own masculine
aura...? The fact that he had put
the feathers in the pocket that he
usually kept his pipe in ... ?

He decided to leave the merest tip
of the feather showing, nonetheless.
He had noted that Ellevie went
through her master compass tending
routine with a certain lack of en-
thusiasm; probably she would think
that the tiny touch of gold was just
another speck on the paintwork.

He waited in the foul-smelling
compartment for what seemed like
far too long a time. But he had to
be sure. He decided, at last, that his
scheme was working. Before plant-
ing of the feather, the maimed bird
had been shifting to starboard, the
merest fraction of a degree at a time,
continually. Now it was motionless,
just straining at its harness.

Grimes put out the light, let him-
self out, locked up, then returned the
key to EUevie’s cabin. He went back
up to the bridge, looked into the
chartroom. It seemed that Missenden
had been able to take one star, but
that his sums were refusing to come
out right.

The voyage wore on. It was not
a happy one, especially for
Grimes. There was nothing to read
and nobody to talk to except Missen-
den and Ellevie — and the former
was all too prone to propagandize on
behalf of the galactic supermen,
while the latter treated Grimes with
contempt. He was pleased to note.

\56

0_£1

however, that they seemed to be get-
ting on each other’s nerves. The hon-
eymoon, such as it had been, was
almost over.

The voyage wore on. No other
ships were sighted, and the heavily
clouded weather persisted. Once or
twice the sun showed through^ and
once Missenden was able to obtain
a sight, to work out a position line.
It was very useful as a check of dis-
tance run, being almost at right an-
gles to the courseline.

“We shall,” announced Missenden
proudly, “make our landfall tomor-
row forenoon.”

“Are you sure?” asked Grimes
mildly.

“Of course I’m sure.” He prodded
with the points of his dividers at the
chart. “LookI Within five miles of
the D.R.”

“Mphm,” grunted Grimes.

“Cheer up. Commodore! As long
as you play ball with the barons they
won’t boil you in oil. All you have
to do is be reasonable.”

“I’m always reasonable,” said
Grimes. “The trouble is that too
many other people aren’t.”

The other man laughed. “We’ll see
what the Council of Barons has to
say about that. I don’t bear you any
malice — well, not much — but I
hope I’m allowed to watch when they
bring you around to their way of
thinking.”

“I hope you never have the pleas-
ure,” snapped Grimes, going below
to his cabin.

The trouble was that he was not
sure. Tomorrow could be arrival day
at Port Paraparam on Tangaroa. It
could be. It could not. If be started

taking too much interest in the navi-
gation of the ship — if, for example, .
he took it upon himself to compare
compasses — his captors would at
once smell a rat. He recalled twenti-
eth-century sea stories he bad read,
yarns in which people, either goodies
or baddies, had thrown ships off
course by hiding an extra magnet in
the vicinity of the steering compass
binnacle. There had even been one
in which the hero had achieved the
desired effect by sticking a weight
under the north pole of the gyro
compass rotor with chewing gum,
thus introducing some most peculiar
precession. Those old bastards had it
easy, he thought. Magnetism is
straightforward, it*s not like playing
around with the tail feathers of a
stupid bird.

He did not sleep well that night
and was up on bridge, before break-
fast, with Missenden. Through a pair
of binoculars he scanned the horizon,
but nothing was there, no distant
peaks in silhouette against the pale
morning sky.

The two men were up on the
" bridge again after breakfast. Still
there was nothing ahead but sea and
sky. Missenden was beginning to look
worried — and Grimes’s spirits had
started to rise. Neither of them went
down for the midday meal — and it
was significant that the^ steward did
not come up to ask if they wanted
anything. There was something in the
atmosphere of the ship that was
ugly, threatening. The watches —
helmsmen and lookouts — were be-
coming increasingly surly.

“I shall stand on,” announced
Missenden that evening. “I shall

158

stand on. The coast is well lit, and
this ship has a good echometer
“But no radar,"* said Grimes.

“And whose fault is that?’* flared
the other. “Your blasted priests’.
They say that they’ll not introduce
radar until it can be manufactured
locally!”

“There are such things as balance
of trade to consider,** Grimes told
him.

“Balance of trade!” He made it
sound like an obscenity. Then. “But
1 can’t understand what went wrong.
The Dead Reckoning — my ob-
served position — ”

“The log could be running fast.
And what about set? Come to that
— did you allow for accumulated
chronometer error?”

“Of course. In any case, we’ve
been getting radio time signals.**

“Arc you sure that you used the
right date in the ephemeris?*’

“Commodore Grimes? As I told
you before. I’m a good linguist. I can
read Tangaroan almost as well as 1
can read En^sh.”

“What about index error on that
sextant you were using?”

“We stand on,” said Missenden
stubbornly.

Grimes went down to bis cabin.
He shut the door and shot the secur-
ing bolt. He didn’t like the way that
the crew were looking at the two
Earthmen.

Morning came, and still no land.

The next morning came, and
the next. The crew was becoming
mutinous. To Missenden’s troubles

THE BIRD-BRAINED NAVIGATOR

— and he was, by now, ragged from
lack of sleep — were added a short-
age of fresh water and the impend-
ing exhaustion of oil fuel. But he
stood on, stubbornly. He wore two
bolstered revolvers aU the time, and
the other ririp’s firearms were locked
in the strongroom. And what about
the one that Ellcvie had be^ waving
around? wondered Grimes.

He stood on — and then, late in
the afternoon, the first dark peak
was faintly visible against the dark,
clouded sky. Missenden ru^ed into
the chartroom, came back out.
“Mount Rangararol” he declared*

“Doesn’t look like it,” said Ellevie,
who had come to the bridge.

“It must be.” A great weight seem-
ed to have faBeu from his shoulders.
“What do you make of it, Commo-
dorer

“It’s land,” admitted Grimes.

“Of course it’s land! And look!
There on the starboard bow! A ship.
A cruiser. Come to escort us in.”

He snapped orders, and Kawaroa*s
ensign was run up to the gaff, the
black, mailed fist on the scarlet
ground. The warship, passing on their
starboard beam, was too far distant
for them to see her colors. She turn-
ed, reduced speed, steering a con-
verging course.

The dull boom of her cannon
came a long while after the flash of
orange flame from her forward tur-
ret. Ahead of Kawaroa the exploding
shell threw up a great fountain of
spray. It was Grimes, who ran to the
engmeroom telegraph and rang Stop.
It was Ellevie, who, dropping her
binoculars to the dsck, cried, “A
Braziperuan ship!” Then she pulled

159

her revolver from her pocket and
aimed it at Missenden, yelling, ‘Terry
traitor!” Unluckily for her she was
st^ding just in front of Grimes, who
felled her with a rabbit punch to the
back of the neck. He crouched,
scooped up the weapon and straight-
ened. He said, “You’d better get
ready to fight your faithful crew
away from the bridge, Missenden.
We should be able to hold them off
until the boarding party arrives.” He
snapped a shot at the helmsman, who.

relinquishing his now useless wheel,
was advancing on them threatenin^y.
The man turned tail and ran.

“You’re behind this!” raved Miss-
enden. “What did you do? You gave
your parole!”

“I didn’t do anything that I prom-
ised not to.”

“But — what went wrong?”

Grimes answered with insuffer-
able smugness. “It was just a case of
one bird-brained navigator trusting
another.” END

May 10-12, 1968. DISCLAVE. Wash-
ington D. C. Regency-Congress Motor
Hotel. For information: Jack C. Halde-
man, 1244 Woodboume Avenue, Balti-
more, Md. Featuring a lively slide show
‘'The Decline and Fall of Practically
Everybody*’ narrated by J. K. Klein and
based on his photos of many past con-
ventions. Guest of Honor: Robert Silver-
berg.

Jtme 21-23, 1968.^ DALLAS CON. At
Hotel Southland, Dallas, Texas. For in-
formation: Con Committee *68, 1830 High-
land Drive, Carrollton, Texas 75006.
Membership $2.50.

June 2A-August 2, 1968. WRITERS*
WORKSHOP IN SCIENCE FICTION &
FANTASY. Participants may enroll for
2, 4, or 6 weeks; college credits will be
given. Visiting staff will be: Judith Merril,
Fritx Leiber, Harlan Ellison, Damon
Knight, Kate Wilhelm. For information:
Robin Scott Wilson, Clarion State College,
Clarion, Pa. 16214.

June 28-30, 1968. MIDWESTCON. At
North Plaza Motel, 7911 Reading Road,
Cincinnati, Ohio. Program includes a ban-
160

quet, cost $3.50. For information: Lou
Tabakow, 3953 St. John’s Terrace, Cin-
cinnati, Ohio 45236. Membership: $1.00.

July 4-7, 1968. F-UN CON. In Los
Angeles: at Statler-Hilton Hotel. For

information: Charles A. Cra3me, 1050 N.
Ridgewood Place, Hollywood, California
90038. Advance membership: $2.00: sup-
porting membership: $1.00.

July 8-13, 1968. INTERNATIONAL
SCIENCE-FICTION FESTIVAL. Show-
ing of sf films from all over the world.
Judging by a distinguished panel. For in-
formation: Festival del Film di Fanta-
scienza, Castle San Giusto, Trieste, Italy.

July 26-28, 1968. OZARKON III. At
Ben Franklin Motor Hotel, 825 Washing-
ton, St. Louis, Missouri. Guest of Honor:
Harlan Ellison. For information: Norbert
Couch, Route 2, Box 889, Arnold, Mis-
souri 63010. Membership: $2.00.

August 23-25, 1968. DEEP SOUTH SF
CONFERENCE VI, New Orleans, Louisi-
ana. Details to be announced. For informa-
tion: John H. Guidry, 5 Finch Street, New
Orleans, Louisiana 70124. Guest of Honor:
Daniel F. Galouye. Membership: $1.00.

August 29-SeptetxtbeT 2, 1968. BAY-
CON: 26th World Science Fiction Con-
vention. At Hotel Claremont, Oakland,
California. Philip Jose Farmer, Guest of
Honor. More details later. For informa-
tion: BAYCON, P.O. Box 261 Fairmont
Station, El Cerrito, California 94530.
Membership: $1.00 foreign, $2.00 sup-
porting, $3.00 attending. Join now and
receive Progress Reports.

■■ E

CRY

Dear Editor:

Re the letter by Mrs. Rhoda Wills
in your March issue. There is no
accounting for tastes, of course, and
perhaps Mrs. Wills’s letter ought
not even to be dignified by a reply,
but her attitude is both foolish and
representative of a section of the
readdnig public. As far as 1 know
there has been a running battle
throughout literary history concern-
ed with whether literature should
properly instruct or entertain, and
no adequate conclusion will ever be
reached as long as every person is
permitted his own opinion. There is
no reason science-fiction, science fan-
tasy, or pure fantasy should be
either instructive or entertaining,
or educational, enlightening, and so
on; it may be any of these or nonCy
if the author chooses — but it will
probably be one. An author should,
ideally please himself first, and if
he also pleases the readers who
choose to read his works, so much
the better. In other words, the obli-
gation, if any, is with the reader.
The newsstands place pornographic
books on their shelves, but the public
is not obliged to buy them — any-
thing else would be more worth
while. What is needed is a genuine
discriminative effort on the part of
each individual reader in deciding

what is good for him and worthy of
his attention. In the same light he
has no right to prescribe for others
whose tastes may differ.

In my opinion and acquaintance,
readers and writers of sf and fan-
tasy represent the elite of the
world’s general reading public. Many
of them may be peculiar (I’m quite
peculiar myself), but then any se-
lected group of people will have its
peculiarities — painters, horse lov-
ers, dog fanciers, and so on. And
Mrs. Wills’s irresponsible claim that
no real scientist or educator would
uphold what If is printing (and evi-
dently the entire genre is included)
is fidmply not in accordance with the
facts. Writers and readers of science-
fiction and science fantasy are the
well educated, are the well informed,
are in many cases, the scientists of
this country and other countries.
And most educators on the univer-
sity level will not deliberately spurn
sf; they will usually admit that it
has literary merits even though tiiey
may not care for it themselves.
There is a sf section of the southern
chapter of the Modem Language
Association!

Beyond all this, however, Mrs.
Wills does have a point. Does sf
owe anything to its adherents? Per-
haps so, in some cases, and I shall

161

iise televisioii isf as an example. Both
The Invaders and Star Trek serve
an infoimative end, VTihatever theor
design may be. Bnt another show.
Lost in Space, (has fallen on bad
times. In three years the series has
shifted from a semi-scientific basis
to a fanitastie. The principals, now
are a Hattie boy, a strangely emotion-
al robot and a psendo^octor, who,
despite the fact that he is despicable,
cowardly, greedy, and cruel when
necessary, is made to retain our in-
terest and even sympathy. He has
become ithe hero of the program,
and this is truly insidious, because
it is not sufflieiently clear that he
is a non-hero or anti-hero. He re-
ceives little or no punishment and
is rewarded more often than not by
oontiiiiied acceptance of his crimes.
Where are the vndues here? If there
are any, they have become warped
out of countoiance.

Against this, however, we have the
truly magnificent fantasies of E. R.
Burroagh^ who has given the world,
in Taa^an, a quasi-realistic figure
that has, in a short fifty years, be-
come a popnlar hero representing
good to rank with or above King
Arthur and Robin Hood. Yet Tarzan
books are escapism in the purest
form. What have they to do with the
real problems and responsib^ities of
today’s and tomorrow’s world. Any
young boy has missed one of the ex-
periences of childhood if he never
reads a Tarzan book. And I can also
mention the works of Andre Norton,
L. Spraigue de Gamp, A. Merritt,
Jack Vance, and — the list is end-
less. Sherlock Holmes is no less
wonderful because he is a fantasy
hero, of sorts ; I can say all this and
still admit th^ fantasy and the re-
cent sword and sorcery are not my
favorites. Credit must be given

where it is due — a story stands on
its own merits, or should if it does
not. What is needed, once again, is
an individual ability to discern and
discriminate; if we do not possess
these talents strongly, we should
practice them.

Well, now, I did not start out to
write the decisive essay on tins sub-
ject, and, despite the length, I can
see that I have not done so. But it
is important that we leam to judge
literature of all kinds with some-
thing more than iigtnorance and our
own predispositions. If there does
exist an inability to separate fact
and fancy, we should look farther
than our writers and editors for a
reason. Science fiction is not all
bad, bnt neither is it all good, as
some of the fans apparency feel.
There is a wider scale of comparison
than greatl terrific! and Wow!

Oongratulations on a fine sf mag-
azine and a steadily better letter
section. — James M. Gale, 7100
Cresthill Drive, Knoxville, Tennessee
37919.

« ♦

Dear Sir:

As most of your readers probably
already know, NBG has renewed
“Star Trek” for the 1968-69 season.
It is a pleasure to offer a third sea-
son of this imagiinative series.

While we were formulating next
season’s schedule, more than 100,000
viewers — one of the largest totals
in our history — wrote or wired
their support for “Star Trek.” Ob-
viously, it is not possible to answer
such a large volume of mail individ-
ually, so I, therefore, extend a gen-
eral thanks on behalf of NBG man^
agement to your readers who took
the time and trouble to communicate
with us. The response was gratify-
ing, — Mort Werner, Vice President,
NBC Television, New York, N.Y.

162

A new science-fiction magazine
with a new concept in publishing

Each issue will be filled with
stories by Foreign Authors

NTERNAIiONAL

7SCIEHCE-FKTI0H/

Will give American readers a chance to read the
science-fiction stories by Authors popular in the
rest of the world. Written and translated by the
top writers throughout the world.

We hope you will like it.

PLEASE LET US KNOW!

NEWSSTAND ONLY

The Science Fiction Book Ciub invites you to tab

2-woiume Treasury i

when you join the Science fiction
Book Club and agree to accept only
4 books during the coming year.

How to Get This Unusual Value

Because you enjoy Science thrillers, the Sci
ence Fiction Book Club would like to ac
quaint you with the most imaginative, in
formative, entertaining new science hctioi
books as they are written. That is why w<
have arranged to send you this lOOO-pagi
Treasury of Great Science Fiction for onlj
10^ — to help cover shipping — with a Tria
Membership in the Club.

Here’s how the Club works: each month i
offers a really superb new science fact o
fiction book at a fraction of its regular price
Even though these books sell for $4.95, $5.9!
and more in their original editions, club mem
bers get special full-length, hard-cover edi
tions, FOR ONLY $1.49 each (unless yoi
choose to take an extra value selection a
higher prices). And the Club tells you in ad
vance what each monthly selectfon will be
During your Trial Subscription you agree t<
take as few as four books in the next twelv(
months. After that you may take as few or a:
many books as you want, and you may cance
at any time.

NO RISK
GUARANTEE

If not delighted
with introduc-
tory package, re-
turn it within
10 days to can-
cel membership.
Mail coupon to:
Science Fiction
Book Club, Gar-
den City, New
York, 11530.

A TREASURY OF GREAT SCIENCE FICTION

Edited by Anthony Boucher
Two giant volumes. Over 1000 pages of excit-
ing fiction. A handsome addition to your
library. Includes John Wyndham’s classic Re-
Birth . . . Heinlein’s Waldo . . . Anderson's
Brain Wave ... a total of 4 full-length novels,
12 novelets, 3 short stories by such masters
as Bradbury, Arthur Clarke, Judith Merril, Al-
fred Bester, A. E. Van Vogt, C. M. Kornbluth,
Theodore Sturgeon — and more.

SCIENCE FICTION BOOK CLUB
Dept. 86-FHX, Garden City, N.Y. 11530

Please accept my application for membership in the Science Fiction Book J'*
Club and rush me The Treasury of Great Science Fiction. 1 enclose lOit -n
to help cover shipping. Then, every month, send me the Club’s free bul- ^
letin, “Things to Come.” which describes coming selections. For each o
book I accept. I will pay $1.49 plus shipping and handling, unless I take o
an extra value selection at a higher price. 1 need take only four books S
within a year and may resign any time thereafter. z

NO-RISK guarantee. If not delighted with my introductory package, o
I may return it in 10 days, pay nothing, owe nothing, and my member- «
ship will be canceled. ^

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